Newt Gingrich campaigns with the thumb of one hand in a vast corporate pie and the index finger of the other in the political winds. His personal for-profit and advocacy ventures skew his perception of whats “necessary for the country”.
His campaign is nothing more than a glorified marketing tour for his books and DVDs with the required debate thrown in here and there. Gingrich rarely makes a public appearance without referencing the title of something or other he’s selling, or working a book signing into the mix, and doing it on the dime of campaign donors. Even his campaign website is hawking the wares of Gingrich Productions. It’s slimy.
Gingrich loves to pontificate, and no one loves the sound of Newt’s voice more than Newt. He makes points with his arms outstretched like he’s welcoming sheep into the fold; but take away the polished oratory and the bullet points, and you’re left wondering if there’s an actual plan in there… anywhere.
He's got a plan, but it won’t benefit the American people. There’s hardly a special interest Gingrich isn’t beholden to, or that hasn’t paid him enough of a fee to guarantee a place at the table if he were elected. His so-called 21st Century Contract with America is a contract for corporate America, not the least of which to benefit would be his own business interests.
His campaign “Healthcare Plan” tells us:
"We must repeal and replace the left's big government health bill with real solutions that will lower costs and improve health outcomes."
But fear not America, Gingrich just happens to own the
Center for Health Transformation where
he stated:
"The replacement of Obamacare will require an enormous amount of activity… the Center for Health Transformation will be at the forefront of each of these areas,”
If he’s elected you can bet it will.
Then there’s Gingrich’s now defunct American Solutions for Winning the Future ; as
Politico reported in 2009,
"...they accepted at least $460,000 from oil interests in the first half of the year, after advancing offshore oil drilling as an issue during the 2008 campaign cycle…”
The group’s chief executive, Joe Gaylord, told
Politico in July, that he intended to transition American Solutions into a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, declaring:
“The work of American Solutions will continue because we have an influential niche in the political world and the issue-advocacy world,...”
How true. According to
Open Secrets, five of the top ten contributors to Gingrich’s American Solutions in the 2010 election cycle were energy companies, contributing a total of 1.2 million dollars. No big surprise then that Gingrich’s “Energy Plan” claims
“The first steps we need to take are to develop more of America’s oil, natural gas, and oil shale resources, expand nuclear power, provide prizes for key energy breakthroughs, and an emphasis on incentives, not taxes, to achieve our energy and environmental goals.”
What kind of “prize” do you give the billion-dollar corporation that has everything?
Think Progress recently reported,
"The five Big Oil companies earned over $32 billion in profits in the third-quarter of 2011, bringing their overall profits for 2011 to a staggering $101 billion."
And while taxpayer money is subsidizing these companies to the tune of 10 billion a year, the top five oil companies used 1/3 of their profits buying up more of their own stock. Can anyone with a brain really get behind the idea that these companies need “incentives”, let alone subsidies?
Newt’s “Jobs and Prosperity Plan”is long on the prosperity (for business), but short on job creation; the crux of the plan being tax breaks. Newt repeats the tired claim that we need corporate tax cuts because,
“U.S. tax rates are some of the highest in the world, making us less competitive”.
but he omits a relevant fact; as the
New York Times has reported,
“…by taking advantage of myriad breaks and loopholes that other countries generally do not offer, United States corporations pay only slightly more on average than their counterparts in other industrial countries. And some American corporations use aggressive strategies to pay less — often far less — than their competitors abroad and at home.
In fact A Government Accountability Office study released in 2008 found that 55 percent of United States companies paid no federal income taxes during at least one year in a seven-year period it studied.”
A
Washington Post article points out that we’re giving tax breaks to corporations to encourage them to create jobs in the U.S. --
when we have no way of actually knowing if those jobs are created here.
“There is no law requiring companies to reveal publicly where their employees are based…”
The latest data show that multinationals cut 2.9 million jobs in the United States and added 2.4 million overseas between 2000 and 2009.”
Any corporate tax cuts should be contingent on employing U.S. workers inside the U.S.
Newt also thinks training programs should be part of unemployment benefits, a good idea on its face; however, there are no specifics regarding the type of training. Instead, he suggests that this training
“…be delegated to the 50 states so each can experiment with the best way to use unemployment compensation as a job training program.”
What would this mean for America’s unemployed guinea pigs? Character-challenged Governors like Scott Walker and Rick Scott would immediately reclassify all minimum wage jobs as internships and the unemployed would be flipping burgers and stocking juice boxes 60 hours a week for their $200.00.
Gingrich loves to refer to himself as an “Ideas Man”, but ideas require an actual plan to get you there.
Andrew Ferguson who, either to his credit or a bout of temporary insanity, actually read all of Gingrich’s books, wrote a great article about him in the New York Times; and one thing Ferguson said is telling:
“Gingrich’s vagueness was always a problem, but the books show something more: a near-total lack of interest in the political implementation of his grand ideas — a lack of interest, finally, in politics at its most mundane and consequential level.”
Newt states on his campaign website that
“The 21st Century Contract with America is so large and covers so many changes necessary to get America back on the right track that it can't possibly be developed by a small group.”
The entire next year will be devoted to harnessing the wisdom and perspective of the American people to improving, developing and clarifying all four phases of the Contract. This website, Newt.org, will be the central hub where citizens can participate in this development. It will be released in final form on September 27, 2012.”
How patronizing. What he's really saying is if he gets the nomination, he’ll run a major con on the American people for a year, revealing his “plan” right before the election, when he gives them a repackaged version of the same nonsense his party’s pushed for decades, while trying to claim it’s a consensus from voters.
Here’s a small glimpse of Gingrich’s “ideas”, and how they stack up to reality, and the opinions of the American people:
“Fundamental reform of entitlement programs”
“As president, I will act to strengthen Social Security.
As more Americans live longer and healthier lives, strengthening Social Security also means creating new options for younger Americans. We must therefore consider a voluntary option for younger Americans to put a portion of their Social Security contributions into personal Social Security savings accounts. Other countries, such as Chile, have found that this model creates vast savings while giving beneficiaries more control over when and how they plan to retire.”
Quite the contrary, as
Economist’s View reported in 2006 regarding the Chili model:
"Many of those who started work when the system was first adopted are realizing that they have not been able to contribute enough to get a significant pension," ... they resent "overhead costs that are so high" and that have led to record profits for the pension funds that manage contributions automatically deducted from workers' paychecks. ..."
And according to the
report Chili’s Privatization Failures:
“…commissions and other administrative costs have swallowed up large shares of personal accounts. It is estimated that roughly… one-quarter to one-third of contributions made by employees retiring in 2000 went toward fees.”
The system has been such a failure that members of both parties in Chili agreed it needed to be changed.
Not surprisingly, securities and investments happen to be number six in Gingrich's top twenty industry campaign donors.
But what exactly do Americans think about our current programs? A Pew Research Center
poll found among other things:
“Generally, the public is resistant to any cuts in entitlement benefits in order to reduce the budget deficit or reduce the tax burden. By 58% to 35%, most say keeping entitlement benefits as they are is more important than reducing the budget deficit.
And by an almost identical 59% to 32% margin, more say that higher priority should be placed on avoiding future Social Security benefit cuts than on avoiding any Social Security tax increases for workers and employers.”
The idea of Americans using private investment to fund retirement turns “the golden years” into an unnecessary crapshoot, when you consider it would be relatively easy to fix social security by simply lifting the cap on the payroll tax temporarily.
About the FDA:
Gingrich has had it in for the FDA since his years in the House when he referred to it as “the “number one job killer” in the country. Mother Jones reported on radical FDA proposals by Gingrich’s Progress & Freedom Foundation in 1995. Here are some of the highlights via Project Censored:
“…place responsibility for drug development, testing, and review in the hands of private firms hired by the drug companies themselves.”
“…limit the liability of drug companies that sell dangerous drugs to the public.”
“…the FDA would not be authorized to request additional testing or data…”
Yeah, that’ll work out great for Americans.
As usual where Gingrich is concerned, there was an industry fronting the plan.
"The foundation had “financial backing from some of the biggest names in the pharmaceutical industry, including Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Eli Lilly & Co., and Marion Merell Dow. Another drug manufacturer, Glaxo, has given an undisclosed amount to the foundation, in addition to contributions of approximately $325,000 to the Republican Party and Republican candidates. As a whole, the drug industry contributed more than $1.6 million to the Republican Party in the 1993-94 election cycle.”
In an interview with
KTIV Gingrich reiterated his plan for :
“…Eliminating the EPA, FDA, and the Department of Energy.”
For an “ideas man” this takes the cake for both arrogance and stupidity; but this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his scorched earth government reform policies. He’s also mentioned doing away with the Dept. of Education, and the Congressional Budget Office, according to
TPM.
How do Americans feel about such “plans”?
“Only a very small minority of Americans – less than 18% – say they want less government regulation of most industries.”
According to an Opinion Research Corp. survey via
PRNewswire:
"More than two out of three Americans (67 percent) oppose abolishing the EPA, including half (49 percent) who strongly oppose it. Among those opposing the Gingrich plan: 61 percent of Republicans, 57 percent of Independents, and 79 percent of Democrats."
Gingrich can definitely lay claim to one thing no other GOP contender can; both parties have a great distaste for him. Right-wing pundits are having a field day pointing out his lack of card-carrying Republican principals.
From Michael Brendan Dougherty at
Business Insider:
“The Obamas are the picture of blue-state family-stability. Gingrich is the face of red-state family dysfunction and hypocrisy. If you somehow nominate this man, say goodbye to "character counts" arguments. You'll have lost them already.”
A list of Gingrich’s anti-conservative ideas is making the rounds on right-wing sites, including Dougherty's:
"He promoted the return of the Fairness Doctrine.
He was for a federal individual health-care mandate, the lynchpin of ObamaCare.
He was practically spooning Nancy Pelosi in commercials about the need for government action on global warming.
He supports green energy projects [Solyndras] and farm-subsidies.
Even as late as this year he was pitching for more government intervention in the health-care system at the progressive Brookings Institution."
Michelle Malkin pointed out that Gingrich’s backing of Dede Scozzafava in the NY-23 race October 2009, prompted
“… rank-and-file conservatives to send back his book and GOP solicitations like … reader Barnaby, who sent back his crossed-out Republican solicitation forms with a “NO RINOS” sticky note for Newt Gingrich…”
Conservatives are also skewering him for the latest Freddie Mac revelations, his support for ethanol subsidies, partial amnesty for illegal immigrants, and his perceived slight of Golden Boy Paul Ryan to name a few.
Yet, Gingrich was recently quoted in the
L.A. Times as saying,
"I have more substance than any other candidate in modern history,"…
I think we've all scraped that same "substance" off our shoes a time or two.
A Close Look at Newt Gingrich Part 1: Wait, What Do I Think?
A Close Look at Newt Gingrich Part 2: The Parts of His Record He Doesn't Talk About