The good folks at the RNC took a look at what candidate Obama promised in Nevada during the 2008 presidential campaign … and the record of failure that followed. The result reveals President Obama’s failure to live up to candidate Obama’s promises. In a new video the RNC reminds us of how Obama’s failed promises impact Nevada. Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the country — 12.6%, the highest foreclosure filings in the country and more than 58% of properties with mortgages underwater: Research proving Obama’s failed promises is provided below the fold courtesy of the RNC. FAILED ON HOUSING PROMISE: Obama Promised Nevadans That He Would “Act Quickly To Help People Stay In Their Homes” “I’ll also act quickly to help people stay in their homes, something that’s especially critical here in Nevada where foreclosure rates are five times the national average. I’ll help responsible homeowners refinance their mortgages on affordable terms, and put in place a three-month moratorium on foreclosures to give folks the breathing room they need to get back on their feet. And I won’t let banks and lenders off the hook when it was their greed and irresponsibility that got us into this mess.” (Senator Barack Obama, Remarks At A Campaign Event , Reno, NV, 10/25/08) FAILURE: Obama’s “Mosaic” Of Housing Policies Is “ Entering Its Fourth Year Of Weak Sales And High Foreclosures.” “The proposal, to be released in the coming weeks, is the latest addition to a mosaic of Obama administration programs aimed at boosting the housing market, which is entering its fourth year of weak sales and high foreclosures.” (Lorraine Woellert, “Obama Pushes Proposal To Streamline Refinancing For Homeowners,” Bloomberg , 1/25/12) Under Obama’s Housing Programs “ Fewer Than 1,000 Loans Have Refinanced.” ”Haven’t similar programs been tried before? Yes. But those programs put in place a series of rules designed to ensure that government entities weren’t taking on more risk by allowing investors and banks to offload risky mortgages onto the government. In 2010, for example, the Obama administration rolled out a program to let underwater borrowers refinance through the FHA, but that program required banks to first write down loan balances so that borrowers could qualify under existing rules. Fewer than 1,000 loans have refinanced through the program. Congress approved a more complicated version of this idea in spring 2008 called Hope for Homeowners, but it also resulted in just a few hundred refinances.” (Nick Timiraos, “Six Questions On Obama’s Mortgage Refinance Proposal,” The Wall Street Journal , 1/25/12) Four Years Later Housing Is Still “ Especially Critical Here In Nevada” “For 60 Consecutive Months, Nevada Has Had The Highest Foreclosure Rate Of Any State. That’s Five Long, Painful Years.” (Dana Bash and Deirdre Walsh, “No Silver Lining In Housing Market As Nevada Votes,” CNN , 2/3/12) “More Than 6 Percent Of Nevada Housing Units (One In 16) Had At Least One Foreclosure Filing In 2011, Giving It The Nation’s Highest State Foreclosure Rate For The Fifth Consecutive Year” (RealtyTrac, “2011 Year-End Foreclosure Market Report: Foreclosures On The Retreat,” Press Release , 1/12/12) “[L]as Vegas Posted The Nation’s Top Foreclosure Rate For The Year Among Metropolitan Statistical Areas…” “With 7.38 percent of its housing units (one in 14) with at least one foreclosure filing in 2011, Las Vegas posted the nation’s top foreclosure rate for the year among metropolitan statistical areas with a population of 200,000 or more.” (RealtyTrac, “2011 Year-End Foreclosure Market Report: Foreclosures On The Retreat,” Press Release , 1/12/12) In Nevada, Nearly Two-Thirds Of Homeowners Are Underwater On Their Mortgages. ”Data earlier this year from CoreLogic.com showed that nearly two-in-three Nevada homeowners owed more on their property than their homes were worth – a situation also known as being ‘underwater.’ Nevada was followed by Arizona (51 percent), Florida (47 percent) and Michigan (36 percent) in terms of underwater loans.” (Aaron Blake, “Obama And The Politics Of The Housing Foreclosure Crisis,” The Washington Post ‘s “ The Fix ,“ 10/24/11) FAILED ON AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE IN 2008, OBAMA PROMISED NEVADANS THAT HIS HEALTH CARE PLAN WOULD LOWER PREMIUMS PROMISE: Obama Said That Under His Plan, Americans Would See “Lower Premiums.” “If you have health insurance, the only thing that will change under my plan is that we will lower premiums.” (Senator Barack Obama, Remarks At A Campaign Event , Reno, NV, 10/25/08) FAILURE: Factcheck.org: ObamaCare Is Actually Making Health Care “Less Affordable.” “At the moment, the new law is making health care slightly less affordable. Independent health care experts say the law has caused some insurance premiums to rise. As we wrote in October, the new law has caused about a 1 percent to 3 percent increase in health insurance premiums for employer-sponsored family plans because of requirements for increased benefits. Last year’s premium increases cast even more doubt on another promise the president has made – that the health care law would ‘lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year.’” (D’Angelo Gore, “Promises, Promises,” Factcheck.org , 1/4/12) The Washington Post ‘s The Fact Checker: “Insurance Premiums Have Gone Up . . .” “Moreover, at this point it is debatable whether the law has made health care more affordable. Insurance premiums have gone up, in part because of new benefits mandated by the law.” (Glenn Kessler, “The Fine Print In Obama’s ‘Promises Kept’ Ad,” The Washington Post’s ” The Fact Checker ,” 1/6/12) Kaiser Study Found That Costs Of Family Coverage “Climbed” 9 Percent In 2011. “The average cost of a family policy climbed 9 percent in 2011 to $15,073, according to a poll of 2,088 private companies and state and local government agencies by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation in Menlo Park, California, and the Chicago- based American Hospital Association’s Health Research and Educational Trust.” (Jeffrey Young, “Health-Benefit Costs Rise Most In Six Years,” Bloomberg , 9/27/11) Workers Paid An Average Of $132 More For Family Coverage In 2011 Than They Did In 2010. “Although premiums rose, employers kept the percentage of the premium workers pay about the same: An average of 18 percent for single coverage and 28 percent for family plans. Still, with rising costs, workers paid more, up an average of $132 a year for family coverage. Since 1999, the dollar amount workers contribute toward premiums nationally has grown 168 percent, while their wages have grown by 50 percent, according to the survey.” (Julie Appleby, “Cost Of Employer Insurance Plans Surge In 2011,” Kaiser Health News , 9/27/11) The Cost Of Single Employee Coverage Grew 8 Percent According To The Kaiser Survey. “Family plan premiums hit $15,073 on average, while coverage for single employees grew 8 percent to $5,429, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust. (KHN is an editorially-independent program of the foundation.)” (Julie Appleby, “Cost Of Employer Insurance Plans Surge In 2011,” Kaiser Health News , 9/27/11) Nevada Received A Waiver From ObamaCare To Avoid “Destabilization” The Obama Administration Gave Nevada A Statewide Waiver From ObamaCare To Avoid “ Destabilization Of The Individual Market .” “The Health and Human Services Department announced late Friday that Nevada had secured a statewide waiver from certain implementation requirements of the Obama administration’s health care law, because forcing them through, the department found, ‘may lead to the destabilization of the individual market.’” (Karoun Demirjian, “Nevada Secures Partial Waiver From Federal Health Care Law,” Las Vegas Sun , 5/16/11) Nevada Received A Waiver Reducing The Requirement Of Revenue Spent On Medical Expenses From 80 Percent To 75 Percent Due To Fears It Would Drive Golden Rule And Aetna From The Insurance Market. “Nevada’s Insurance Division had appealed to the feds to reduce the federal requirement that health plans serving people who buy insurance on their own must spend at least 80 percent of the money they collect on medical expenses. Under the national rule, companies that don’t spend that percentage of revenue on medical costs have to cut policyholders rebate checks starting this year. Nevada asked that requirement be reduced to 72 percent for one year, arguing that top insurance providers would be so strapped to make the payments that they’d exit the state market. Health and Human Services didn’t fully buy that argument, but did agree to reduce the requirement to 75 percent for a year, expressing concern about what might happen to people with policies from insurers Golden Rule and Aetna if they didn’t.” (Karoun Demirjian, “Nevada Secures Partial Waiver From Federal Health Care Law,” Las Vegas Sun , 5/16/11) FAILED ON GREEN ENERGY JOBS IN 2008, OBAMA PROMISED TO CREATE GREEN ENERGY JOBS AND REDUCE DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL PROMISE: Obama Said He Would “Create Five Million” New Jobs And “End Our Dependence On Oil From Middle East Dictators.” “If I am President, I will invest $15 billion a year in renewable sources of energy to create five million new, green jobs over the next decade – jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced; jobs building solar panels and wind turbines and fuel-efficient cars; jobs that will help us end our dependence on oil from Middle East dictators.” (Senator Barack Obama, Remarks At A Campaign Event , Reno, NV, 10/25/08) FAILURE: Obama Has Taken Credit For 2.7 Million Green Energy Jobs That He Did Not Create. “The Brookings Institution study refers to 2.7 million workers currently employed by the clean economy — not the number of jobs created by Obama, which a viewer might interpret from the ad. The report found that ‘clean economy establishments’ added half a million jobs between 2003 and 2010, comprising six years of the Bush administration.” (“AdWatch: Obama’s 1 st Campaign TV Ad Defends His Energy Record Without Feel-Good Images,” The Associated Press , 1/20/12) Obama’s $38.6 Billion Green Loan Program Created Only 3,500 Jobs, But Obama Had Predicted It Would Save Or Create 65,000. “The Washington Post reported in September that Mr. Obama’s $38.6 billion green loan program had created a mere 3,500 jobs over two years. He had predicted it would ‘save or create’ 65,000.” (Editorial, “The Non-Green Job Boom,” The Wall Street Journal , 11/28/11) Obama’s $500 Million Program Designed To Train Workers For Green Jobs “Has Come Up Far Short Of Its Goals.” “The Labor Department’s inspector general says a $500 million program designed to train workers for green jobs has come up far short of its goals. A report finds that only about 8,000 people participating in the program have actually found work so far. That’s just 10 percent of the target goal of placing 80,000 workers in careers in energy efficiency or renewable energy by 2013.” (“Report Says Green Jobs Program Far Short Of Goals,” The Associated Press , 10/3/11) It Is “Absolutely Not True” That Obama’s Policies Have Helped Wean The U.S. From Foreign Oil. “When asked, though, whether the Obama administration’s policies have helped wean the U.S. from foreign oil, [Oppenheimer & Co. energy analyst Fadel] Gheit was equally emphatic. ‘Absolutely not true,’ Gheit said. ‘It was all market driven and all through American ingenuity….It was no thanks to Washington, not thanks to lobbyists, not thanks to anybody.’” (Josh Gerstein, “What Obama’s First Ad Doesn’t Say,” Politico’s “Under The Radar” , 1/19/12) The Obama Administration Denied A Permit To Build The Keystone Pipeline. “The Obama administration announced Wednesday that it will deny a permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline, an important link between a U.S. market that’s thirsty for energy and a rich source of petroleum in nice, stable, neighborly Canada.” (Editorial, “Pipeline Politics: Misguided Obama Blocks Keystone Pipeline,” Chicago Tribune , 1/19/12) “The Oil From Canada Could Ultimately Supplant Much Of The Oil The United States Imports From The Middle East And Other Unstable Regions. It Could Give The Country A Measure Of Energy Security.” (Editorial, “Pipeline Delay An Insult To Jobless,” The Detroit News , 11/14/11) Previous editions of Obama’s failed promises: Obama’s failed promises: Florida edition Obama’s failed promises: Iowa edition
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Obama’s failed promises: Nevada edition
President Obama and much of official Washington, D.C. will troupe to the Washington Hilton Hotel on Thursday for the 59th National Prayer Breakfast.
As late as last week, Florida looked like it was going to be a toss-up. No more. I’m calling this state for Mitt Romney by double digits. Newt Gingrich is acting like he knows this isn’t going to be pretty. Rick Santorum will finish third, buoyed by a solid debate performance and with his family in the news. Ron Paul will break into the double digits. After his decisive win in South Carolina, Gingrich stormed out to a big lead in the Florida polls. The evaporation of that lead is the biggest setback yet in a campaign that has been filled with near-death experiences followed by death-defying stunts. What will Gingrich do for his next act? Romney beware: hell hath no fury like a Newt scorned.
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Florida Predictions
Can a judge, without even holding a hearing, order a woman sterilized in a state where compulsory sterilization has never been the law? As North Carolina prepares to pay reparations to victims of its decades-long eugenics campaign, Massachusetts strangely enters a sterilization debate that most had thought long over. Norfolk County Probate and Family Court Judge Christina L. Harms earlier this month ordered that a bipolar and schizophrenic woman be “coaxed, bribed, or even enticed…by ruse” to abort her pregnancy and undergo sterilization. If the mentally ill woman were sane, the judge determined, she “would not choose to be delusional” and therefore, she would choose abortion. Does “our bodies, our choice” still apply when we are not in our right minds? The Michael Dukakis-appointed jurist abruptly retired following the controversial decision and a state appeals court overturned part of her ruling. “We reverse that portion of the order requiring sterilization,” wrote Judge Andrew R. Grainger. “No party requested this measure, none of the attendant procedural requirements has been met, and the judge appears to have simply produced the requirement out of thin air.” The reversal crucially noted, “In ordering sterilization sua sponte and without notice, the probate judge failed to provide the basic due process that is constitutionally required.” The abortion order was also subsequently overturned by a separate court. Another, more influential Massachusetts jurist sided with Judge Harms and not Judge Grainger. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. pointed to written briefs examined by hospital directors as evidence that ” the rights of the patient are most carefully considered,” and that, combined with subsequent appeals to actual courts, ensured that the sterilized “had due process of law.” Though the representatives of the people of Massachusetts never fell for eugenics, the state’s elites and institutions played a leading role in popularizing, legitimizing, and codifying it. In the futuristic Boston of 1887′s Looking Backward , Edward Bellamy celebrates that “the principle of sexual selection, with its tendency to preserve and transmit the better types of the race, and let the inferior types drop out, has unhindered operation.” A century ago Harvard University offered eugenics courses and educated the movement’s most fervent servant, Charles Davenport of the Eugenics Records Office. Even Great Barrington’s favorite son, W.E.B. Du Bois, five years after Hitler had ascended to power, echoed the racialist language of the social hygiene crusade. Harvard’s first African-American Ph.D. observed that “the mass of ignorant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously,” and that “among human races and groups, as among vegetables, quality and not mere quantity really counts.” But the most pernicious influence regarding eugenics in America was the Bay State’s Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. “One decision that I wrote gave me pleasure,” he reflected, “establishing the constitutionality of a law permitting the sterilization of imbeciles.” The Boston Brahmin spoke of 1927′s Buck v. Bell , the 8-1 decision that stamped the high court’s imprimatur upon state-directed sterilization. “We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives,” Holmes infamously ruled. “It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Starting with Indiana in 1907, and concluding in Oregon in 1981, forced sterilization claimed upwards of 60,000 American victims during the 20th century. From California to Connecticut, eugenics won over most state legislatures. The period between the world wars experienced the highest hopes that science could perfect humanity. Then the experience of Nazi Germany shattered such illusions. What happens when the imbeciles are the sterilizers rather than the sterilized? Justice Holmes never considered that. The citizens of Massachusetts can be proud to have never elected a government so naïve in its faith in government that it made law of the eugenics fad. But the state’s elites, from novelist Edward Bellamy to jurist Christina Harms, haven’t always exhibited such healthy skepticism of empowering the powerful. The people of Massachusetts can’t say they we weren’t forewarned. The judge’s name is Christina Harms, after all.
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Mass Sterilization
It’s been a while since I’ve seen an Iranian film, though I am always eager to see them. Most in recent years have shown the influence of Abbas Kiarostami ( A Taste of Cherry ), who has a highly visual style with long, slow takes and spare dialogue. Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation ( Jodaeiye Nader az Simin ) is a very different bowl of cherries. Tautly plotted and full of passionate speech, it engages the mind more than the eye and poses a moral dilemma, or a series of interlocking moral dilemmas, unsparingly but subtly limned, rather than the stark existential crisis of a Kiarostami film. And although the picture is very firmly set in the social, political, and religious context of contemporary Tehran, its morality has a poignantly universal relevance. Too many reviewers and interviewers focus on Mr. Farhadi’s sometimes troubled relationship with the Iranian government, as if there could be nothing out of Iran of any interest that did not directly challenge its clerical authorities. But to my mind one of the best things about this film is that it makes all such political questions seem trivial and irrelevant. The separation of the title is between Nader (Peyman Moadi) and his wife, Simin (Leila Hatami), who desperately wants to leave the country. Somehow — how is never made clear — she has obtained permission to go, but Nader refuses to accompany her as he has to care for his senile father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi), a job which seemingly has fallen to her lot hitherto. “He doesn’t even know you’re his son,” insists Simin before the magistrate whom she is petitioning for a divorce. “But I know he is my father,” replies Nader. The magistrate tells them that they are wasting his time. Theirs is a small problem, he says — and it is, too, in the sense that it is really quite simple. If she wants to go, she should go; if he needs to stay, he must stay. Neither can impose his or her will on the other. But we soon discover that there is a complication. The couple’s 11-year-old daughter Termeh, played by the director’s own daughter, Sarina Farhadi, insists on staying with her father, and her mother will not leave the country without her. In fact, it appears that it is largely for the daughter’s sake that she wants to go in the first place, just as it is for the sake of her parents’ marriage that Termeh wants to stay. So, instead, Simin goes to stay with her mother (Shirin Yazdanbakhsh) and Termeh fills in for her as she can in looking after the old man, who needs almost constant attention.. For when she is in school, however, Nader hires Razieh (Sareh Bayat), a poor religious woman, to attend his father. But Razieh keeps the job a secret from her husband, Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini), a hot-tempered, unemployed cobbler who is heavily in debt. Moreover, she has to travel from a long distance away and must bring her own small daughter, Somayeh (Kimia Hosseini), with her to work. The arrival of Razieh seems to coincide with a further deterioration in the old man’s condition. When he becomes incontinent, she must call the religious authorities for a ruling on whether she is allowed to clean him up. One day Nader comes home early to find no one in the apartment but his father, who has been tied to the bed by one wrist and who has subsequently fallen out of it. Without his oxygen, the old man would soon have died. Nader also thinks some money is missing. When Razieh returns, she cannot explain where she has been, though she denies taking any money. He fires her and thrusts her roughly out of the door. The next day she suffers a miscarriage. The film’s big question seems to be: did Nader know when he pushed Razieh out the door of his apartment that she was pregnant. He insists he didn’t. She insists he did. If the court decides he did, then he is guilty of manslaughter; if he didn’t, then he is not guilty. Guilt will mean a prison term for Nader and/or blood money to be paid to the family of Razieh — including Hodjat, whose desperate need of money means that his (and Razieh’s) incentive to lie is as great as Nader’s. Because key elements of the story have been withheld from us, we are in the position of the judge (Mohammad Ebrahimian) who has to decide who is lying. So, by the way, is Termeh, whose attachment to her father and her hopes of keeping her parents together seem to depend on her belief in his truthfulness. But the consequences of the truth in both cases can be so drastic that it is hard to work up very much moral indignation against any of those who are driven to lie — as everyone is by the time the missing parts of the puzzle are supplied and we discover the truth for ourselves. Or almost everyone is driven to lie. The exception is Simin who is compensated, as it were, for having set the whole train of events in motion in the first place by being the only one left at the end with arguably clean hands in this heart-wrenching wrangle over love and hate and guilt and money. As a result, we are more than ever aware of the central enigma of Simin’s wish to escape, which is the only thing in the movie that remains — ironically, I think — morally unassailable. For everyone else, we are left with something approximating to the pity and terror that Aristotle said was appropriate to tragedy — which, to the extent anything can be these days, this movie is. Above all, it is like The Artist in being an example of the art of movie story-telling, something that America pioneered in the great days of Hollywood but which is now almost a lost art here. This is a movie that will break your heart, and of how many movies in the postmodern era can that be said? It is not to be missed.
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A Separation
