Cole writes: "What will the United States look like in 2016 if Mitt Romney wins?"
Juan Cole; public intellectual, prominent blogger, essayist and professor of history. (photo: Informed Comment)
Top Ten Coming Disasters: Romney's America 2016
05 November 12
hat will the United States look like in 2016 if Mitt Romney wins? While predicting the future is of course impossible, actually my experience is that if you play out known possible scenarios in your mind, you can often get a fair idea of the likely course of events.
- Austerity does not work– it produces massive unemployment and deficits. The tight money policies tried in Europe, predictably, have produced spiraling unemployment and ballooning deficits with a continued mortgage crisis in Spain. US corporations are sitting on trillions that they are refusing to invest in the US economy, and only government can continue to get money into the economy. If Romney follows through on his pledge of austerity policies, US unemployment will likely increase and we will replicate many of the Rajoy government’s mistakes in Spain.
- Romney will abolish the Affordable Healthcare Act or “Obamacare,” throwing tens of millions of Americans back out of health insurance programs and leaving them, as he suggests, to the mercies of emergency room treatment. Emergency room treatment is much more expensive for taxpayers than would be the ACA, and having 30 or 40 million people dependent on it is highly undesirable. It cannot provide, e.g., pregnant women with prenatal care, which in turn is correlated with better health for mother and child. And, there simply are not enough ER doctors and nurses to care for that many people. With ACA, we have a chance to forestall the current 26,000 deaths a year resulting from people lacking health insurance. If ACA is repealed, they’ll still die, and over the four years of a Romney administration there will be 104,000 extra needless deaths among the uninsured.
- Romney-Ryan want to further lower taxes on the rich. As it is, income inequality has been growing enormously in the United States. the top 1% have captured 93% of the country’s increased income during the recovery from the Depression of 2008-2009. Romney’s policies will accelerate the gap between the rich and the poor. With Citizens United and other Supreme Court rulings allowing the wealthy and corporations to buy elections, the growing concentration of wealth and power is deeply undermining American democracy. Even now, 400 billionaires have almost as much wealth as the bottom half of the country. That inequality will get worse under a President Romney.
- Romney-Ryan are determined to outlaw abortion. Ryan does not even make any exceptions for it. Romney does, but he still wants to deprive women of choice and of the right to control their bodies. There is no scientific argument for the personhood of a cytoblast, and Bishop Willard Romney simply wants to impose religious doctrines on all women in contravention of the First Amendment of the US constitution. Romney will likely have the opportunity to appoint one or two Supreme Court justices, and will attempt to ensure that they are anti-choice.
- Romney likes to rattle sabers. He says he wants a more forceful intervention in Syria, and seems willing to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities near Isfahan (likely killing 100,000 people). If you hated the Iraq War, you are going to really, really despise the Iran War.
- Romney supports Republican/ Koch Brothers attempts at voter suppression. By requiring voter i.d. of people who do not drive, he would impose what is essentially a poll tax on urban voters, such that they’d have to lose a day of work and pay money for a state i.d. Voter suppression is a way of decreasing the youth, African-American and Latino vote and so unfairly weighting the votes of white drivers. These voter suppression measures pose the risk of further degrading American democracy and establishing what is increasingly a tyranny of the white minority.
- Romney is determined to increase the amount of carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere by backing Big Oil against renewable sources of energy. His policies will accelerate climate change, increasing the average surface temperature of the earth, with more frequent droughts, forest fires, and extreme weather events.
- Romney is in the back pocket of casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who is spending $100 million to elect him. Adelson worships far rightwing Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu the way the wayward Children of Israel used to worship the Golden Calf. Romney says he will recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and it seems clear he will back to the hilt the creeping illegal Israeli annexation of the Palestinian West Bank.
- Romney-Ryan will end Medicare as we know it, turning it into a privatized voucher system that will screw over the younger Baby Boomers, and then Gen X and the Milennials and the Nexters.
- Romney has been the biggest liar among presidential candidates since Tricky Dick Nixon. He has repeatedly mouthed a whole litany of falsehoods. He tried to scare Toledo auto workers by saying that the Obama administration was moving their jobs to China, and the CEO of Chrysler was constrained to slap Romney down. Romney
So these are the contours of the America of 2016 under Romney. Unemployment could remain stubbornly high under austerity policies, and the budget deficit could grow, causing the US credit rating to be further cut and increasing the cost of borrowing money. The country could be at war in Iran and Syria (a further drain on the national budget). Israel would be turned decisively into an Apartheid state with the end of any possibility of a two-state solution, promoting further trouble for the US with the Muslim world. Tens of millions of Americans will be without health insurance. Social Security benefits could be taxed, and Medicare could be cut (voucherized), costing individuals thousands of dollars a year. Women’s rights will be chipped away at. Climate change will accelerate and dirty sources of energy like coal will be encouraged. Hot, dry summers could produce dust bowls in some parts of the US, while hurricanes will increase in their ferocity. And, public trust in democracy will be deeply undermined, since the president will repeatedly be caught in lies, and because the 47% will be effectively disenfranchised.
The US will be hotter, with more violent weather, will be poorer save for the 400 billionaires, will be a virtual nation of hobos, and will end up a brutal plutocracy where those too poor to afford private insurance will simply die in the tens of thousands each year, and where elections and legislation are openly bought and paid for.
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Comments
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Juan, you called it down to the letter, without exception.
This will kill America for sure, and I believe that that is Romney's plan anyway. He does not care about America; he cares only about the power and the money and the people who are just like him.
Pray for a landslide by President Obama or this election will get stolen, and we will be in the deepest pit of hell ever.
Who would have believed there could be anyone or anything worse than George W. Bush and his Cheney-driven policies.
The singular worse thing that Obama did after getting elected was to NOT investigate the Bush/Cheney regime and squelch the Rove machine! If he had, we might not be in this quagmire looming in a potential Romney regime.
N.
"Experience"... Romney has experience but not the experience that will do anything for the country OR for YOU. You people that think someone with a shitload of money is going to do anything to lift you up are delusional. His experience is that of taking advantage of someone else's disaster and mixing up a great big lemonade for HIMSELF...leavi ng YOU to die of thirst.
Just as you "aid and abet" by taking your "nothing can be done about it" position. If you think the Dems are just like the Repubs, you are the worst kind of aider and abetter -- the one who COULD have done something, and selfishly chose NOT to do so. President Romney will thank you for your lack of caring . . .
Many people have been "trying". It takes masses of Americans to wake up and back these efforts, to turn from the distractions (sports, video games, texting, TV, etc.) and to focus and look stupid and unpopular for a while. Obviously, Americans have not the history of pain and need, most don't know anyone personally who has died in our corporate wars; we're cowardly warriors that push buttons and watch explosions from afar and assume that we got the bad guy with pin point accuracy as a city block is vaporized. Americans are great only in their own minds and we have the government that we deserve, no matter which of the two choices we choose. One is just willing to let a little more seep through his clenched fist. Watch: http://billmoyers.com/episode/on-winner-take-all-politics/#.UJliBU3nDm8.facebook
Tell me that half the nation has not actually been sold this faulty, dangerous product?
Tell me the major media are doing a hysterically funny job of trying to convince America that half our nation would get behind a mincing stuffed shirt capitalist cyborg.
In the very worst sense of concocted persona- purchased with hundreds of millions of dollars in advertised lies- Mitt Romney- the man, the career, and, the candidate for Commander in Chief- has been Fabricated in America.
Who in their right mind would support this deliberately malignant mirage of a man?
Believe me, I know a few people in this situation. The response CAN NOT be: "she should have..." It doesn't work like that either.
Because you -from your attitude at least- appear to be a mean-spirited reactionary who can't see beyond your own nose end.
You and your ilk refuse to recognize that progressive and provenly much happier, "Civilized" countries have embraced many social safety nets -taking the burden of having to pay for private, expensive and inadequate health care from small business. These include programs like Well-Baby (weekly nurse visits) for ALL children to check their nutrition and general health.
Even you must know that the USA is between 39th and 42nd in infant mortality and other generally almost universally recognized (except in the "Fragmented States") life-quality and well-being indicators and by extension the quality of public education, which is disgraceful considering the power, wealth, latent talent and work ethic lying dormant here but suppressed by the ruling few that refuses to distribute any of even their bail-out funds to the common good.
The smugness of your statement as being "an employed person" does not ensure that you'll remain such, especially if Twit gets his way -unless you are in one of the few non-productive growth industries like "Medical Billing", a.k.a., "How to deny claims".
Twit represents Medievalism and "Back to the Future" in it's most poisonous manifestation. Like that do ya?
I'm not saying who to vote for just pleading for intellectual honesty.
I find it impossible to believe that if McCsin had done the exact same Republican things that Obama did that there would not have been more mobilization against these right-wing policies pursued by Obama.
Romney is a creepy replicant of Bush in style and utter lack of substance. Neither man seems capable of expressing genuine human emotion nor conveying credibility or authenticity; their shared diction, elocution, "security" vocabulary and rigid body language sound and feel programmed by some Disney tech geek, not the organic result of diverse life experience, clear vision or personal challenges overcome. I'm still, as the Brits say, gobsmacked by Romney nor his five sons never having served in the U.S. military, despite his jingoistic support for the Vietnam War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I consider that void indefensible and reprehensible for a presidential candidate who's a super (chicken) hawk on foreign policy. It's Dick Cheney Redux, a potential Commander-in-Ch ief with zero instincts, let alone experience in that role, and the hysterical bluster of the Neocons cattle-prodding him into the use of force for its own sake.
In 24 hours, I hope to be sipping some Kahlua and milk on ice with a big smile on my face, as Obama kicks ass.
U.S. citizens have turned their attention to U.S. problems only, which is natural, but which blinds them to other issues outside their borders that will also affect them. goodsensecynic commenting below this does mention world issues that are highly pertinent, as well.
OWS did achieve things, but I was certainly sad to see the effort reduced. It was highly educational and inspirational - and it did some good!
then please ...
do what Americans do best: take pity on those who cannot help themselves. I'm taking about the citizens of Argentina, Belize, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Holland, Iceland, Japan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mongolia, New Zealand, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Senegal, Tonga, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Western Samoa, Yemen and Zambia (etc.)
What you people do affects us all, and only you can prevent a Romney victory. Please help us ... the members of your species who, by accident of birth, cannot vote in your election.
Thank you so much for your excellent and global perspective. -I've been posting something similar on RSN for a while now; a stone cast here causes ripples all over the world.
So much power to be harnessed for good or abused for gain.
Twit's would be a stinking, polluted Tsunami of planetary destruction on so many fronts.
It's a shared and precious "Goldilocks Zone" globe we inhabit and "Crawling coop'd to live and die".
Of course the rich(who do not need public services)will continue to thrive as their taxes will remain low and loopholes remain intact.
And the rest of us? For those of us who are aware of the coming Oligarchy-sadne ss and regret of what could have been will drain our spirit. But there will remain many who will not notice nor care-(the under-educated poor and the right wing white working class.) If we could turn their apathy into enlightened rage-perhaps a change could come. But it may be too late.
Aside from women's equality in terms of choice and healthcare, and the 80% of the population being strung along in the belief (or disbelief) that a Ryan-Romney-Rov e-Rand worldview is "splendid"....
Social 'safety nets' would be declared 'wasteful' in order to give the 20% "certainty" of continued phenomenal wealth. Planned Parenthood: gone. New Supreme Court: teflon-coated if Mitt appoints. Abortion no, polygamy... maybe.
There is so much spin and re-directing of attention (the art of illusion) that it's almost distasteful to try to focus in on the actual 'choice' and issues before us. It is MOST crucial, imm, to avoid the worst-possible W-on-steroids scenario, which is Romney.
Don't take my word, listen to GOP and Tea-Party heroes as they assess the 'character', judgment, and consistency of "Mitt the Flip":
http://bit.ly/RA39TN
Vote for WE THE PEOPLE representation. If it's about voting *against*... vote against nonstop lying and vote manipulation. Against propaganda. Corruption. Status quo of comfy do-nothing for the people, Congress.
Vote out those who do not understand what "people" means. Vote out those who blame the 80% or genuflect before the Koch/Rove/Adels on money for the Plutocracy.
It's important!
The republican congress and court will stonewall every legitimate and important piece of legislation. They know that they can tread water for another four years, making the democrat administration look bad and ineffective to address the issues.
Got a point for discussion here? Maybe just havin' a bad-hair day or severe hangover?
You don't get outa here that easily.
Last year, at this time, there were Occupy encampments in all sorts of places. On Election Day, we'll see if
the Occupy influence improved American politics.
But what is far worse is the indication Mr. Cole dare not confront: how the subjugation of women and minorities will be defined as essential to "homeland security" -- and how the Department of Homeland Security will then complete its transformation into the new SS/Reichssicher heitshauptamt, employing its Gestapo powers to stamp out what few embers of U.S. liberty remain.
In which context note how the Republicans are already defying the Constitution to methodically suppress urban and minority votes -- not just the tactic by which they intend to win the election, but an obvious rehearsal for the far more brutal suppressions they envision.
I fear the worst. Indeed I am reminded of what Winston Churchill said on the eve of the Battle of Britain: "only a miracle can save us now." That miracle was the epic heroism of the Royal Air Force. But unlike our British cousins in 1940, we progressives in 2012 are utterly alone.
If you have not yet voted for Obama, do so now as if your life depends upon it – for in bitter truth it does.
I no longer love Obama but I fear a Romney government.
VOTE OBAMA
A minor error in Juan Cole's article. Social Security is already taxed and has been taxed for years.
1. from a devout christian home and attended strict christian schools and wanted to be a christian church leader
2. had to become a soldier but called himself "a soldier of Christ" and went about converting older soldiers
3. later on as he rose in rank he ran for political office. His powerful speeches were more like an evangelical christian preacher sermon. They were filled with biblical references. He promised the people that he would turn the country into a "christian nation where every knee would bed and head bow at the return of christ"
4. Once elected he did the following: abolished unions
5. abolished abortions telling women that if they sought an abortion he would put them in jail until the baby was born and he did not care if the mother's health was in crisis;
6. made an act that all schools had to teach a daily christian bible class (as well as all soldiers had to be chrstian or convert)
7. met with the Pope 3 times and was given the authority, by the Pope, to appoint the Bishops to his country
but wait there is much, much more...Who was that beloved leader who claimed he was doing the "Lord's work"? Sounds a lot like the Republican party. But, it was Hitler.
If Romney wins we will for sure have
you catastrophe scenario in 2016.
The only positive thing would be that
Romney would have driven the American people into a corner with no chance
of escaping, except starting a peaceful
revolution in order to totally change
the American mindset.
If Obama wins it will be the same as
usual, deedlelido - deedlelida, and
no revolution, postponing disaster
just a little bit.
Which is best ?
Before Nixon.
Before Reagan.
Before Bush.
The difference is the climate change factor
Do you mean most of us are going to float away, die in fire or perish in a drought and this will make the ones who are left turn America into a paradise on earth?
I will be on the streets in protest regardless of how this day turns out.
1. introduced hatred and fear as national mantra..
2. failed to protect our shores and people on 9/11
3. ignored Katrina victims, letting more than 1,000 Americans die
4. created false wars, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands and injury of more than a million
5. almost destroyed the U.S. and world economies
If American voters again hand them the keys, I will know I live among the dumbest sons of bitches on the planet.
One thing Juan said struck me. Corporate America is sitting on a lot of cash.
Of course, it's not like Scrooge McDuck, where they have a swimming pool in the basement filled with gold coins. Most probably they are holding U.S.Bonds. Ironic, really. If there had been fair taxation over these last 20-30 years, all that "debt" would have been revenue and they would have paid tax bills instead of investing in "Treasuries".
All that aside, the question arises: Will they now let loose of their big load of dough and start an investment binge. It seems that the geniuses behind the Romneybot 2012 think so. They expect that all the increased DOD purchasing will cause the industrialists to invest in plants and equipment for the only industry left which can't be off-shored. I am skeptical of the strategy, but, who knows, cross your fingers, it might work.
Meanwhile, the suckers who aren't smart enough to work the death trade will have to eat cardboard, and if the 1%ers are lucky, they will die of stomach problems before the next election.
So let's just hope that HopeandChange wins this round and we don't have to get ulcers worrying about a Romnoid kakatopia.
Have a stress free Tuesday!
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