Reason 5--"Bipartisanship"
The person I'm not voting for has repeatedly charged that the one I am voting for has not shown "bipartisanship" or "leadership" in dealing with those who have opposed him.  This is disingenuous at best and, at worst, perfidious.  The challenger in this race began to campaign for the 2012 election in 2008 before the incumbent even took office.  Three days after the inauguration, leaders of the opponent stated their solemn intention to thwart everything he would try to do.  The opposition's Senate boss has said his number one job has been to ensure the President serves only one term.

I thought the number one job of everyone who holds office under the Constitution was to work with others to achieve the best for the whole country.  My mistake--the oath of office means nothing, apparently.  It is mere empty words.

For the past four years, "bipartisanship" has been an empty word.  It is impossible to "work with", let alone "lead", people who refuse to talk to you.  I don't believe even someone as vacuous as Romney can be serious in his charge about a lack of "bipartisanship".  That is why I think he is somewhere between being insincere and being phony as a three dollar bill on this issue.  He knows why it didn't happen, and who set out from almost the day the President was elected to make it that way.  I hope and pray that their plans come to naught.  If not, they will have set the pattern of hyper-partisanship and refusal to cooperate which will prevail for years to come, and while that may be what the people who have done this deserve, it is not what our country deserves.

Reason 4--Whom would we be getting?
The 4th reason I decline to vote as many seem of my friends think I should is because I'm not sure who it is they would have me vote for...well, I know his name, and what church he goes to, but not a lot else, not really.  Most of the moderate positions he espoused a few years ago, he has abandoned in the quest to get the more extreme element of his party to support him.  When others do this kind of thing, it's called "flip-flopping."  He says he is for bipartisanship, but when's the last time he said something good about his opponent?  If you disdain your competitor, I don't see how you work with him later.

I think there is one core belief about this election that he holds true to, and really only one.  I don't mean his belief that making money is synonymous with virtue.  I think the only polestar for him is that he really, really, really wants to be President, and will do whatever it takes to get there.  He seems to authentic in his drive to obtain the job, I'll grant him that.  There are many in his party for whom that willingness to perform whatever contortion, spout whatever half-truth or outright fib, and curry favor by courting whatever group of voters, is the ultimate point of attraction--the willingness to do whatever one has to do to win.  It is closely akin to the divine right of kings attitude many in that party have:  when you have the "right" to rule, when your superior claim to office is self-evident, then process does not matter and anything you do to gain election is by definition appropriate.  I know I'm tarring the other guy with a brush that has tarred the Bushes and Cheneys before him, but in this case, guilt by association sticks like glue.

So my question is, whom would we be getting if we get the other guy?  The Massachusetts Moderate?  The crimson caveman of his fundraising speeches?  A CEO?  A corporate freebooter?  A crony capitalist?  An auto-pen for whatever the tea party taliban might send him from Congress?  I don't know, and I don't see how anyone can claim to know.

Reason 3--Fun With Numbers
Another reason I intend to vote a certain way is that the person I will not vote for plays games with numbers.  He says the President is a failure because the unemployment rate is stubbornly high.  The unspoken truth of the unemployment numbers is that fiscal austerity has cost hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs even while private sector job growth has been steady, and that is why the rate has remained high. This austerity has been imposed by the red team, and they should not blame the President for it. If the Ryan-Romney budget is implemented, millions of public sector jobs will be lost, and we will have to trust to voodoo economics to create private sector jobs to replace them.

I don't believe lower taxes on the rich and elimination of the regulation that is intended to curb the excesses of the private sector will open a floodgate of new jobs.  There is no evidence that supply-side economics has worked in the past, what ever the wishful thinkers say.  What supply-side economics has done is make wealthy people like Romney and Ryan, wealthier.

As an aside, an economist named Laffer (how apt) once claimed that the willingness of people to undertake economic activity falls rapidly as the marginal tax rate (the rate on the incremental dollar of income) increases.  The Laffer Curve is, like so much of the dismal science, false.  Do you really think someone will refuse to earn a second million dollars of income because they will pay an extra nickel of each of those dollars to income taxes?  I don't.  The rich never seem to hesitate to get richer, which is fine by me. Just don't try to rig the world in your favor and don't cry if you are asked to part with a little more of the second million than you did of the first.  A tax rate of 40% is no higher than what Reagan imposed on high incomes in the 80s.  If the sainted Ronnie could do it then, why is it such a horrible idea now?

You can find some economist somewhere to agree with just about any proposition, and can therefore find "proof" for almost any policy choice from the output of economists.  But such fun with numbers proves nothing.  

I'm not willing to trust voodoo economics to create jobs.  Job growth will continue as conditions improve.  All those fired state and local workers have to work their way through the system and find jobs.  Firing a lot more government workers will not reduce the unemployment rate, whatever creative math the red bunch comes up with.    

Reason 2--In my view, "Obamacare", though flawed and not what I really wanted to see, beats the tar out of "Romney-I-Don't-Care."  I don't see how 50 million uninsured people, a sixth of our population, is not a problem that needs fixing.  The status quo was essentially socialized medicine as to these people--the law required that they be treated if they went into an emergency facility seeking care, and "the system" ended up with the bill.  You and I paid for them through increased costs charged to cover the cost of treating them.  Not providing a basic level of health coverage for all is shameful.

We provide a basic level of legal representation for the indigent.  How is it moral to give them lawyers but not doctors?  

I have no sympathy for the "I've got mine, go get your own" crowd.  I think they are the ones who the Savior described as being goats, being told on Judgement Day that they did not  provide for the least of His brethren.  Government action is an effective and appropriate way for a a society to act, especially a democracy.  Romney says that if he can repeal the Affordable Care Act, he will then work to replace it with something better.  But he doesn't say what he'd replace it with.  Similar to the rest of his promise making, he is light on details.  "That's to be worked out later" is not a basis on which I'm willing to give up a flawed but far better-than-nothing attempt at fixing the problem.  I don't trust Romney to live up to those promises and I trust his party even less.

Why I will vote the way I intend to vote

Hi--I've been gone a while.  My wife has convinced me that this is the place to voice my opinions, not Face Book.  Please note that you are welcome to disagree with me, but this is my place.  If you want to leave graffiti, do so someplace of your own.  Dissenting opinions that aren't sufficiently well argued will be deleted at management's discretion, and all such decisions are final.

I will not be voting the way many of my friends think I should.  I'm going to do a few posts to explain why.  It will be up to you to decide for whom I intend to vote.

Reason 1--I don't want a robber baron as President.  I don't want a corporate raider as President.  I don't want to elect a disciple of Ayn Rand as Vice President.  I don't want the socio-economic clock turned back to the "good ol' days" of 1900.  Those days were good for a few people who clawed their way to the pinnacle of an unregulated economy, but they did so at great cost to the vast majority.   I think this was immoral, and I don't want those days to return.