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What To Make Of Romney The Bully
By Jan Ting on Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
The media have given Mitt Romney a pass he does not deserve on his explanation for bullying gay boarding school classmates as an 18-year-old senior. Romney was fortunate that the bullying story broke in the wake of President Obama’s declaration of support for same-sex marriage, which the media concluded was the bigger political story and more deserving of follow-up and commentary. The Washington Post broke the story of Romney’s bullying a younger student, who later ...
In Defense of Arizona’s Immigration Law
By Jan Ting on Monday, April 30th, 2012
The Obama administration’s challenge to the Arizona immigration statute SB1070 is not about its popularity, or whether the statute is wise or unwise policy. Legislatures are permitted to enact laws thought unpopular or unwise by others. And as Chief Justice Roberts observed, and the administration’s lawyer agreed, the challenge is also not in any way about civil rights or racial profiling. The challenge to SB1070 before the Supreme Court is over the narrow question of ...
Where Are Romney’s Tax Returns?
By Jan Ting on Monday, April 16th, 2012
It’s probably no coincidence that when releasing his 2011 tax return, President Obama also re-released his tax returns from the previous 11 years starting in 2000. Mitt Romney’s father, Michigan Governor George Romney, also released 12 years of income tax returns when he ran for President back in 1968. At that time George Romney explained so many years of tax returns should be disclosed because, “one year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show.” ...
How Obama Should Address the Supreme Court
By Jan Ting on Monday, April 9th, 2012
President Obama has been pilloried by his critics for saying that a Supreme Court decision to find the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional would be an “unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” A Republican-appointed federal judge, Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, abused his position by demanding a written explanation of the President’s words, which Attorney ...
Is Mitt Romney a Conehead?
By Jan Ting on Monday, March 19th, 2012
The Coneheads were a comedy sketch on Saturday Night Live from 1977 to 1979 that featured Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, and Laraine Newman as space aliens stranded on earth and trying to pass as a normal suburban American family. The humor was in their strange dialogue, referring to their unusual food selections as “consumables”, and behavior, such as smoking a whole pack of cigarettes at once, or drinking from a six-pack of beer cans still ...
Why the Jeremy Lin Phenomenon?
By Jan Ting on Wednesday, February 15th, 2012
I suppose that if you don’t live around New York, and you’re not a sports fan, and don’t follow the news, and you don’t happen to be of Asian descent, there might be a chance that you haven’t heard about Jeremy Lin, a point guard for the injury-plagued New York Knicks. Lin had just been called up from the development league on January 23, went in as a substitute on Feb. 4, and proceeded to ...
Is Santorum the Jeremy Lin of Politics?
By Jan Ting on Monday, February 13th, 2012
Rick Santorum, the defeated former senator from Pennsylvania, was given no chance when he announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. Rejected by the Republican establishment supporting Mitt Romney, he waged a lonely and underfunded grassroots effort that ultimately gave him the edge in the Iowa caucuses. This past Tuesday he won all three primaries in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, and now finds himself tied with frontrunner Mitt Romney according to the latest Fox ...
Are the Super Rich Different From Us? Yes, They Pay Lower Taxes
By Jan Ting on Monday, January 30th, 2012
The belated disclosure of his 2010 tax return by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney confirms the public speculation that Romney and his wife pay income tax on his enormous income of nearly $22 million in 2010 at a lower rate than many middle-income taxpayers. Their federal income tax of less than $3 million amounted to an effective tax rate of only 13.8 percent, although the top federal income tax rate of 35 percent was supposed ...
Can We All Pay Taxes at the Romney Rate?
By Jan Ting on Thursday, January 19th, 2012
Republican presidential frontrunner and multi-multi-millionaire or billionaire Mitt Romney is now saying he might release a tax return for one tax year in April, after the race for the Republican nomination is decided, but not before the primary elections which he hopes to win in South Carolina, Florida, and other states. What’s he hiding? If there’s nothing to hide, he should release his tax returns immediately as other candidates have done, and as President Obama ...
Why Deficits and the National Debt Matter
By Jan Ting on Monday, January 16th, 2012
Should we worry about large U.S. budget deficits and the growing national debt or not? I’m a worrier, but I get criticism asking “What’s the problem?” Interest rates remain at record lows; the U.S. government can borrow at almost no cost. In this environment, why shouldn’t the U.S. try to stimulate our too-slow recovering economy by borrowing and spending more? Why shouldn’t the U.S. pursue a social and economic justice agenda, assisting Americans with the ...