2012 Election Final Stretch Blips

Today we've got some Final Stretch entries for the election.

• First off, the Huffington Post has a collection of the "best of" political late night talk show jokes, which can be viewed here. 
• Next, Comics Alliance has an interview with Ed Brubaker, the writer of Captain America for the past eight years, including Cap's death and the comic's return to political stories, as he departs from the comic, which can be read here. 
• Wired has a list of the Top 10 Fictional Characters that they'd like to see as president, which included Professor Charles Xavier, and can be read here. 
• China Daily has an interesting article on how campaigns figure out the best places to show ads, and can be read here. 
• And apparently Paul Ryan has been calling the brochure the Obama campaign has been producing detailing what he plans to do with a second term as a comic book, which you can read more about it here, see a video of Ryan talking about here, and the brochure in question can be downloaded here (pdf).

Next up is a (rather silly) video by JibJab of a Superhero Barack Obama. And finally is video from The Simpsons of Mr Burns Endorsing Mitt Romney

Obama, Romney, and the ScienceDebate.org questions

For this week's issue, which will also be the last issue examined in this election, we'll look at candidates' to the ScienceDebate.org Question. For those of you not familiar with the Science Debate Questions, they are a series of scientifically focuses questions selected from thousands of question submitted by scientist, engineers and concerned citizens that they felt were the most important science questions facing the United States the the candidates for president should be talking about on the campaign trail, and was refined into the final list of what are considered the most important science policy question for 2012 with the help of leading scientific and engineering organizations in the United States. As Science Debate says on their website:

Candidates readily debate jobs and the economy even though they are not economists; they debate foreign policy and military intervention even though they are not diplomats or generals; they debate faith and values even though they are not priests or pastors. We call on the candidates for President to also debate these Top American Science Questions that affect all voters' lives.

Both the questions and the candidates' answers can be found here. I'm not going reproduce them here since they are fairly well arranged on Science Debate's website.

Presidents and Housing

For this week's issue, we'll look at candidates' platforms on Housing. Once again, all information and videos are taken directly from the candidates' websites, either in part or in whole, unless otherwise noted, with minimal alteration to clarify and streamline information.

Barack Obama
President Obama offers no opinion about Housing on his website, so here are some videos of President Obama on the subject.


Romney's Rebuttal
Summarized from Romney's Website

• The only path to a healthy housing market is a healthy economy, but a housing recovery is central to a healthy economy. President Obama promised a much healthier economy by now, but the economy he promised is nowhere to be found.  Instead, our nation’s economy remains stuck with unacceptably high unemployment over 8% and economic growth too slow to ever reach a full recovery.  
• Under President Obama, home prices have fallen, homeowners have received more than 8.5 million foreclosure notices, and 11 million Americans owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. President Obama’s only plan to address the housing crisis was the same plan he used to try to fix the economy: spend more taxpayer money on big-government programs.  To address the housing crisis, President Obama rolled out an alphabet soup of more than ten housing finance programs rather than offering a real solution.  Meanwhile, credit-worthy borrowers are struggling to get a loan as a result of the uncertainty caused by the President’s policies.
• By continuing to insist on a government-centric approach to housing and to the economy more generally, President Obama has hamstrung the economic recovery and slowed the recovery of the housing market.  Right now taxpayers are on the hook for almost 90 percent of all new mortgages.  The two government-sponsored government housing corporations (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) fueled a predictable disaster and President Obama has done nothing to reform these entities.  

Mitt Romney
Summarized from Romney's Website

• Understanding that a healthy economy is the key to a healthy housing market, Mitt Romney has an economic plan that will result in more jobs and more take home pay.  Independent economists estimate that the plan will create 12 million jobs by the end of his first term, an essential element to ending the housing crisis.
• In towns across the nation, foreclosed homes sit empty, depressing the value of entire neighborhoods. The government owns about 200,000 of these homes, or almost half of all of the foreclosed homes in the country.  Mitt Romney will responsibly get the government out of the homeownership business and return these vacant homes to productive uses that will increase neighboring home values.
• Foreclosures are a difficult, long, and expensive process for homeowners and lenders alike.  Mitt Romney will facilitate creative alternatives to foreclosure for those who cannot afford to pay their mortgage.  These alternatives will minimize the instability of communities hard hit by the housing crisis, preserve the credit of homeowners, and can help keep families in their homes.
• Since the housing crisis, the government has produced more than 8,000 pages of new rules and regulations.  The problem is that they are poorly designed, and have made it harder for people with good credit to get loans.  Mitt Romney will put in place smarter regulations to restore a functioning marketplace that holds banks accountable and restart lending to creditworthy borrowers. 
• Any serious plan for ending the housing crisis must address its root cause.  Two government-sponsored companies known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were at the center of the housing crisis.  Mitt Romney will reform these government-sponsored companies to protect taxpayers from additional risk in the future by ensuring taxpayer dollars in the housing market are replaced with private dollars.

Obama's Rebuttal
As President Obama offers no opinion about Housing on his website, so here are some videos from President Obama and his campaign on Romney's stance on housing.

Conclusion
So in summary, the official stance from both parties are very similar, that the rules need to be reformed and that the housing situation will improve as the economy improves, although some of Romney's comments earlier in the campaign don't line up with this stance.
Turn in Friday for the Superhero opinions.
~James

Presidents and Immigration

For this week's issue, we'll look at candidates' platforms on Immigration. Once again, all information and videos are taken directly from the candidates' websites, either in part or in whole, unless otherwise noted, with minimal alteration to clarify and streamline information.

Barack Obama
Summarized from Obama's Website

• President Obama refuses to give up on the DREAM Act.
  He believes that young people, who were brought here through no fault of their own, should be able to earn citizenship through military service or the pursuit of a higher education.
• Using its authority under existing law, the Obama administration took action to lift the shadow of deportation from young people who came to the United States as children through no fault of their own, so they can pursue their education or apply for work authorization.
• Since the beginning of his time in office, President Obama has worked to build a consensus for Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. He plans to continue his efforts to work with Congress to pass a bipartisan immigration reform, and has promised to make it a priority of his second term as president.
• The Obama Administration is focusing immigration enforcement efforts on those who endanger our communities, and is de-emphasizing low-priority cases like students, veterans, seniors, and military families.
• The President understands the challenges that immigrants face. That’s why he proposed a new rule to keep families together by allowing undocumented spouses and children of U.S. citizens to stay in the country while they begin the legal immigration process.
  

Romney's Rebuttal
Summarized from Romney's Website

• President Obama promised to tackle immigration in his first year in office.  Three-and-a-half years later, America is still waiting for his plan.
• President Obama has failed to update our immigration system to serve the modern economy.  We still do not admit enough high-skill job creators and innovators, and our system still turns away those foreign students whom we educate here and to whom we grant advanced degrees.
• President Obama has utterly failed to secure the border. And instead of taking a strong stand on illegal immigration, he has ordered immigration officials to enforce immigration laws “selectively,” leading to the dismissal of many deportation cases. At the same time, his Department of Justice has sued to stop states from assisting the federal government in enforcing immigration laws.

Mitt Romney
Summarized from Romney's Website

• As president, Mitt Romney will implement a national immigration strategy that bolsters the U.S. economy, ensures our security, keeps nuclear families together, addresses the problem of illegal immigration in a civil and resolute manner, and carries on America’s tradition as a nation of legal immigrants.
• To ensure that America continues to lead the world in innovation and economic dynamism, a Romney administration would press for an immigration policy designed to maximize America’s economic potential. Foreign-born residents with advanced degrees start companies, create jobs, and drive innovation at a high rate. While lawful immigrants comprise about 8 percent of the population, immigrants start 16 percent of our top-performing, high-technology companies, hold the position of CEO or lead engineer in 25 percent of high-tech firms, and produce over 25 percent of all patent applications filed from the United States.
  
  • The United States is projected to face a shortage of 230,000 science and technology workers by 2018.  At the same time, we have set the caps on high-skill visas so low that, for some countries, an entire year’s quota has been filled in an hour.  Mitt Romney will ask Congress to raise the caps on visas for highly skilled immigrants.
  • Many country caps—or limits on immigrants from specific countries—are so low, that America is losing some of the best and brightest to our international competitors.  Mitt Romney will work with Congress to raise the country caps.
  • Every foreign student who obtains an advanced degree in math, science, or engineering at a U.S. university should be granted permanent residency.
•  As president, Mitt Romney will make the system for bringing in temporary agricultural workers and other seasonal workers functional for both employers and immigrants.  We should get rid of unnecessary requirements that delay issuance of a visa, and we should speed the processing of applications.
• Mitt Romney will work with Congress, states, and employers to properly set the cap on non-agricultural temporary worker visas.  Many tourist-oriented businesses in the United States rely on these workers and would have to cut back or cease operations if there are not enough visas. 
• Mitt Romney will protect legal immigration and the 4.5 million who are waiting in line to enter the United States legally by taking a strong stand against illegal immigration. He believes that illegal immigration must end and has a proven track record of advancing that goal.
• According to the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, Border Patrol lacks control of over half of our southwest border. And some estimates indicate that over 40% of illegal immigrants in America entered the country legally, but then overstayed their visas.
  
  • Mitt Romney will complete a high-tech fence to enhance border security.
  • Governor Romney will ensure that we have the officers on the ground we need to gain control of the border.
  • A Romney Administration will work to develop an efficient, effective system of exit verification to ensure people do not overstay their visas.
•  Mitt Romney will develop an effective, mandatory employment verification system that will enable employers to be sure that those they hire are eligible to work. This will discourage illegal immigrants from coming to America to seek jobs.
• Governor Romney opposes all “magnets” that entice illegal immigrants to come to our country.   As governor, he vetoed in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants and opposed driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.
• As president, Mitt Romney will foster a legal immigration system that works. This will offer an alternative to those who would otherwise enter illegally.  For instance, reforming our current temporary worker program will offer employers who need such staff a legal option to find employees.
• Mitt Romney believes in the rule of law and will fully enforce federal immigration law. As governor, he authorized state police to assist the federal government in immigration enforcement.
• As president, Mitt Romney will ensure that husbands, wives, and their minor children are brought together on a timely basis.
  
  • Mitt Romney will speed the processing of applications by eliminating the red tape that is keeping immediate families apart.
  • Mitt Romney will work with Congress to give legal permanent residents the same priority as citizens when applying to bring husbands, wives, and minor children to the United States.
  • Mitt Romney will reallocate green cards to family of citizens and legal permanent residents.
• Mitt Romney believes that young illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children should have the chance to become permanent residents, and eventually citizens, by serving honorably in the United States military.
• Mitt Romney opposes amnesty because he believes that it acts as a magnet encouraging illegal immigration. The last amnesty law passed in 1986 granted legal status to 2.7 million illegal immigrants. In the decades since, the illegal immigrant population has quadrupled. Mitt believes that an amnesty should not be permitted to happen again. Illegal immigrants who apply for legal status should not be given any advantage over those who are following the law and waiting their turn. Mitt absolutely opposes any policy that would allow illegal immigrants to “cut in line.”

Obama's Rebuttal
Summarized from Obama's Website

• Mitt Romney has promised to veto the DREAM Act as president.
• Mitt Romney has refused to say whether he supports the Obama administration’s effort to lift the threat of deportation from the children of immigrants.
• Mitt Romney is the most extreme nominee in modern history on immigration issues.
  
• Mitt Romney wants all undocumented immigrants to “self-deport,” and he supported the extreme Arizona immigration law, parts of which were struck down by the Supreme Court.
  
• Mitt Romney has said he would encourage the inhumane practice of “self-deportation” for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in America.
  

Conclusion
So in summary, Obama wants to make it easier for people to legally immigrate to the United States while putting more effort into dealing with violent and dangerous immigrants, while Romney wants to make a policy that brings money into the United States by making it easier for immigrants with advanced degrees to become citizens, speed up temporary agricultural visa processing, cap all other visa acceptance, bolster Border Patrol being the US and Mexico and remove immigration amnesty.
Turn in Friday for the Superhero opinions.
~James

Political Superhero Comics

 

Veteran comic strip artist Robert Grossman has a satirical superhero comic strip based upon the presidential election, featuring the likes of O-Man, Milt Rhomboid, Paul "Nursery" Rhyme, and Rich Gingnewt. More information can be found in this article from The Atlantic, and the comic can read on its website.

Presidential National Security

For this week's issue, we'll look at candidates' platforms on National Security. Once again, all information and videos are taken directly from the candidates' websites, either in part or in whole, unless otherwise noted, with minimal alteration to clarify and streamline information.

Barack Obama
Summarized from Obama's Website

• President Obama kept his promise to end the war in Iraq and bring our troops home.
• President Obama is drawing down our troops in Afghanistan as we transition security responsibility to the Afghan people, and is on track to responsibly end the war there in 2014. 
• President Obama made the bold decision to order a raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, eliminating the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks and the only leader al Qaeda had ever known. 
• In 2010, President Obama announced an international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials in four years, and has worked to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea. 
• President Obama has strengthened our alliances around the world with friends like Israel, our NATO allies, and our partners in Asia and Latin America. And he has brought together international coalitions to confront shared challenges, such as Iran’s nuclear program.

Romney's Rebuttal
Summarized from Romney's Website

• President Obama has repeatedly sought to slash funds for our fighting men and women, and over the next ten years nearly $1 trillion will be cut from the core defense budget. This budget cutting enterprise is proceeding while American troops are in combat in Afghanistan, returning from their mission in Iraq, and fighting the remnants of al Qaeda worldwide. The Obama administration’s cuts have left us with a military inventory largely composed of weapons designed forty to fifty years ago. The average age of our tanker aircraft is 47 years, of strategic bombers 34 years. The U.S. Navy has only 284 ships today, the lowest level since 1916, and our naval planners indicate we need 328 ships to fulfill the Navy’s role of global presence and power projection in defense of American security. Our Air Force, which had 82 fighter squadrons at the end of the Cold War, has been reduced to 39 today. President Obama has cut funding for national missile defense. 
•  The Obama administration is seeking to reap a “peace dividend” when we are not at peace and when the dangers to our security are mounting. This flies directly in the face of conclusions from the bipartisan Perry-Hadley Commission set up by Congress in 2010. Even before Congress had adopted its latest round of cuts and even before President Obama had proposed yet deeper cuts, the Commission warned that: “[t]he aging of the inventories and equipment used by the services, the decline in the size of the Navy, escalating personnel entitlements, overhead and procurement costs, and the growing stress on the force means that a train wreck is coming in the areas of personnel, acquisition, and force structure.”
• It is unconscionable that the men and women of America’s military must fly in airplanes that are old and unreliable, must sail in ships that have cracked hulls, or must ride in vehicles that are urgently in need of replacement — all because their government has had neither the vision to plan for their needs or the simple common sense to manage its own budget. 

Mitt Romney
Summarized from Romney's Website

• As Commander-in-Chief, Mitt Romney will keep faith with the men and women who defend us just as he will ensure that our military capabilities are matched to the interests we need to protect.
• Romney will put our Navy on the path to increase its shipbuilding rate from nine per year to approximately fifteen per year. He will also modernize and replace the aging inventories of the Air Force, Army, and Marines, and selectively strengthen our force structure. And he will fully commit to a robust, multi-layered national ballistic-missile defense system to deter and defend against nuclear attacks on our homeland and our allies. 
• Romney believes we cannot rebuild our military strength without paying for it. Mitt will begin by reversing Obama-era defense cuts and return to the budget baseline established by Secretary Robert Gates in 2010, with the goal of setting core defense spending — meaning funds devoted to the fundamental military components of personnel, operations and maintenance, procurement, and research and development — at a floor of 4 percent of GDP. 
• Mitt will also find efficiencies throughout the Department of Defense budget that can be reinvested into the force. The Department’s bureaucracy is bloated to the point of dysfunction and is ripe for being pared. In the years since 2000, the Pentagon’s civilian staff grew by 20 percent while our active duty fighting force grew by only 3.4 percent. That imbalance needs to be rectified.
• During World War II the United States built 1,000 ships per year with 1,000 people employed in the Bureau of Ships, as the purchasing department of the Department of the Navy was then called. By the 1980s, we were building seventeen ships per year, with 4,000 people in purchasing. Today, when we are building only nine ships a year, the Pentagon manages the shipbuilding process with some 25,000 people. That kind of excess must be brought to an end along with the byzantine rules and wasteful practices that riddle the military procurement process.
• The measures Mitt Romney will take include establishing clear lines of authority and accountability for each weapons system so they remain on time and on budget. He will institute shorter design and delivery cycles for weapons systems to eliminate the current practice of relying on yet-to-be-developed technologies, which creates delays and cost overruns. This will foster more realistic planning, get equipment into the field at a faster pace, and save the cost of having to keep older weapons systems in circulation.
• Romney will institute greater competition at all levels of the procurement process. And he will work with Congress to pass budgets on time — something the Obama administration has habitually failed to do — to allow the Department of Defense and defense contractors to properly plan multi-year projects without delay and disruption. These and other reforms will ensure a functioning procurement system that redirects savings into the defense of our nation

Obama's Rebuttal
(Summarized from Obama's Website)

• Mitt Romney called the decision to bring our troops home from Iraq “tragic.”
• Mitt Romney has no plan to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan.
  
• Mitt Romney once said, “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”
  
• Mitt Romney has made reckless, unfounded claims but has not outlined any detailed policies for these issues.
  
• On a foreign trip, Mitt Romney insulted one of our closest allies—the British—right before their Olympics. And he’s spent months on the campaign trail criticizing our allies and partners around the world.

Conclusion
So in summary, Obama wants to use more diplomacy and less force to increase stability, while Romney wants to shift military spending from support personnel to front line hardware.
Turn in Friday for the Superhero opinions.
~James

Presidents, Taxes and Budgets

For this week's issue, we'll look at candidates' platforms on Taxes and the Budget. Once again, all information and videos are taken directly from the candidates' websites, either in part or in whole, unless otherwise noted, with minimal alteration to clarify and streamline information.

Barack Obama
Summarized from Obama's Website

• President Obama has cut taxes for every working American, saving the typical middle-class family $3,600 in taxes over his first term. 
• President Obama believes no household making more than $1 million each year should pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than a middle-class family pays.
• President Obama knows we can’t simply cut our way to prosperity. His budget includes investments in education, manufacturing, and infrastructure, while brining discretionary spending to its lowest level as a share of the economy in more than 50 years .
• President Obama has put forward a specific, balanced plan of spending cuts and revenue increases that reduce the deficit by more than $4 trillion over the next decade, including $1 trillion in spending cuts he signed into law last summer as part of a deal with congressional Republicans. 

Romney's Rebuttal
Summarized from Romney's Website

• President Obama has repeatedly called for a “balanced approach,” by which we believe he means cutting spending but also raising taxes, which may sound appealing, but before President Obama exploded the size of the federal government, our existing tax rates were more or less adequate to pay for the government we needed under President Bush.
• President Obama claims he is offering a compromise by permanently increasing the size of the government, increasing the things government does, and increasing the tax burden on the American people.
• President Obama’s proclivity for fostering uncertainty about the long-term shape of the tax code is particularly troublesome. He has embraced one temporary solution after the next while rejecting permanent adjustments that would bring some predictability and stability to investment decision-making. The result is a business climate marked by hesitation.
• No discussion of President Obama’s tax policies would be complete without a reference to Obamacare and its $500 billion in tax increases. Whenever President Obama discusses the need for more tax revenues, Americans should remember that he already got them and spent them on a health care scheme that is itself proving to be hugely disruptive to the economy.

Mitt Romney
Summarized from Romney's Website

• Reducing and stabilizing federal spending is essential, but breathing life into the present anemic recovery will also require fixing the nation’s tax code to focus on jobs and growth. To repair the nation’s tax code, marginal rates must be brought down to stimulate entrepreneurship, job creation, and investment, while still raising the revenue needed to fund a smaller, smarter, simpler government. The principle of fairness must be preserved in federal tax and spending policy.
• America’s individual tax code applies relatively high marginal tax rates on a narrow tax base. Those high rates discourage work and entrepreneurship, as well as savings and investment. With 54 percent of private sector workers employed outside of corporations, individual rates also define the incentives for job-creating businesses. Lower marginal tax rates secure for all Americans the economic gains from tax reform.
• Make permanent, across-the-board 20 percent cut in marginal rates
• Maintain current tax rates on interest, dividends, and capital gains
• Eliminate taxes for taxpayers with AGI below $200,000 on interest, dividends, and capital gains
• Eliminate the Death Tax
• Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)
•  The U.S. economy’s 35 percent corporate tax rate is among the highest in the industrial world, reducing the ability of our nation’s businesses to compete in the global economy and to invest and create jobs at home. By limiting investment and growth, the high rate of corporate tax also hurts U.S. wages.
• Cut the corporate rate to 25 percent
• Strengthen and make permanent the R&D tax credit
• Switch to a territorial tax system
• Repeal the corporate Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)

Obama's Rebuttal
(Summarized from Obama's Website)

• Mitt Romney would have to raise taxes on middle-class families in order to pay for tax cuts for millionaires, costing the typical American family with kids $2,000 more each year.
• Mitt Romney wants to preserve loopholes that allow millionaires like himself to pay a lower tax rate than working families.
  
• Mitt Romney would slash investments in the middle class while providing one of the largest tax cuts in history to the wealthy.
  
• Mitt Romney has refused to detail any plan for how he would reduce the deficit. Instead, he has called for $5 trillion in new tax cuts weighted towards the wealthy and a massive defense build-up with no strategic rationale, along with deep cuts to investments in the middle class.

Conclusion
So in summary, Obama is cutting taxes on the poor and middle-class, increase taxes on the upper class and invest in more of America, while Romney wants to reduce government spending and reduce taxes for businesses and upper-class.
Turn in Friday for the Superhero opinions.
~James

Equal Rights and Women's Health Platforms

For this week's issue, we'll look at candidates' platforms on Equal Rights and Women's Health. Once again, all information and videos are taken directly from the candidates' websites, either in part or in whole, unless otherwise noted, with minimal alteration to clarify and streamline information.

Barack Obama
Summarized from Obama's Website

• President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to help women fight back against pay discrimination. He understands that when women are paid less than men for the same work, it hurts the entire family.
• President Obama was the first sitting president to publicly announce his support for marriage for same-sex couples, and has always believed LGBT Americans should be treated fairly and equally
• President Obama repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” so that gay and lesbian service members no longer have to lie about who they are to serve the country they love.
• President Obama endorsed the Respect for Marriage Act, signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and extended hospital visitation and medical decision-making rights to LGBT couples. 
• President Obama has enacted policies that promote the hiring of people with disabilities, increased funding for students with disabilities, provide Americans with access to affordable health care, and improve accessibility standards.
• President Obama is putting an end to the health insurance company practice of charging women more than men for the same coverage.
• Thanks to Obamacare, many insurance plans are beginning to fully cover birth control without co-pays or deductibles as part of women's preventive care—potentially saving women hundreds of dollars every year.
• President Obama believes a woman’s health care choices are personal decisions, best made with her doctor—without interference from politicians.
• President Obama fought back against Republican attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, one of the largest providers of women’s health services, including breast and cervical cancer screenings, and birth control. Under Obamacare, health insurance companies now cover recommended preventive care like mammograms and cancer screenings, and are beginning to cover birth control without co-pays or deductibles.

Romney's Rebuttal


Romney offers no rebuttal to Obama's Equal Rights or Women's Health platforms on his website, so here an small interview by Romney from May, 2012 for as close a rebuttal by Romney on Obama's Equal Rights Platform I could find. I couldn't not find anything from Romney specifically addressing Obama's Women's Health platform, so if anyone knows of anything let me know and I'll update this article.

Mitt Romney
Romney offers no opinion about Equal Rights or Women's Health on his website, so here are some videos of Mitt Romney on the subjects. Apologies for the lack of straight up Romney-only debates
 speech, his lack of any official releases makes that difficult to do, but his position should still be made clear.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Obama's Rebuttal (Summarized from Obama's Website)

• Mitt Romney refused to say whether or not he would have signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law. 
• Mitt Romney would enshrine discrimination into the Constitution with an amendment to ban marriage for same-sex couples.
  
• Mitt Romney refused to support the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and would have left the policy in place.
  
• As governor, Mitt Romney cut funding for hate crimes prevention and abolished a hate crimes task force.
  
• Mitt Romney would repeal the Affordable Care Act and slash Medicaid, which many Americans with disabilities rely on.
• Mitt Romney would let employers, insurance companies, and politicians limit women’s health choices.
  
• Mitt Romney would repeal Obamacare, and give employers the authority to limit women’s access to common forms of birth control.
  
• Mitt Romney believes that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, and backed an extreme proposal to outlaw abortions even in the case of incest and rape.
  
• Mitt Romney would eliminate all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, and roll back all the benefits of health reform.
  

Conclusion
So in summary, Obama has been giving women more rights, in both the work place and with their medical needs and equal rights for LGTB people, while Romney literally supports making discrimination against women and LGTB people legal. That kinda sickens me...

Turn in Friday for the Superhero opinions. I don't think there will be any question which way the heroes side on this one though...
~James

Presidential Educations

For this week's issue, we'll look at candidates' Plans for Education. Once again, all information and videos are taken directly from the candidates' websites, either in part or in whole, unless otherwise noted, with minimal alteration to clarify and streamline information.

Barack Obama
Summarized from Obama's Website

• President Obama has made education a national priority, as he understands America has to out-educate the rest of the world to be competitive in the global economy, and so he has doubled America's investment in scholarships and financial aid so students from working- and middle-class families can access and complete the college education they need to get the good jobs of the future, Obama has worked to raise K-12 standards, invest in teachers, save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of educators across the country, and turn around low performing schools so that children are prepared for college and careers.
• President Obama signed a new law that makes it easier for students to pay back their federal college loans so that new borrowers would not have to pay more than 10% of their disposable income and that any remaining debt be forgiven after 20 years. Those in public service professions like teachers, nurses or members of the armed forces, will have any remaining debt forgiven after 10 years, provided they make their payments on time.
• President Obama made college more affordable by doubling funding for Pell Grants, increasing the number of recipients from 6 million to 9 million since 2008. He achieved this in part by eliminating the middlemen from the college-loan program, taking away billions of taxpayer dollars that were going to the banks instead of students. The President also created and extended the American Opportunity Tax Credit, worth as much as $10,000 over four years of school, and is estimated to have helped 9.4 million students and families in 2011.
• In his State of the Union address, President Obama challenged schools and states to keep good teachers on the job and keep students in school until they graduate or turn 18. The Obama administration has also fought to save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of educators across the country, with the Recovery Act saving roughly 300,000 education jobs, and in 2010 President Obama helped school districts prevent 161,000 teacher and school staff layoffs.
• To give states the flexibility to use local solutions to improve their schools, and in the face of congressional inaction, President Obama acted to offer states relief from No Child Left Behind mandates.
•  Obama's administration implemented the Race to the Top program, which rewards states for making tough reforms—raising standards, helping teachers improve, and turning around struggling schools. Since 2010, the administration has awarded Race to the Top grants, including Early Learning Challenge grants, to 21 states and the District of Columbia, which serve 65 percent of the nation’s children and 59 percent of all low-income students in the country. Overall, the Race to the Top competition has encouraged states to adopt a high-quality framework of educational standards—and 46 states have already adopted the reforms.
• President Obama is investing in competitive grants to reform community colleges, supporting partnerships between community colleges and employers to provide pathways to good jobs. As a candidate, Barack Obama proposed the creation of a community college partnership program to support institutions that provide a stepping stone to better jobs for millions of Americans, and as President he kept his word and created a new Community College to Career Fund to build on that progress.
• President Obama signed into law an update to the post-9/11 G.I. Bill, which makes it easier for National Guard members who performed active service to qualify for benefits, and allows for education benefits to be transferred to family members.
• Along with proposing other common-sense immigration reforms, President Obama is committed to giving the hundreds of thousands of hardworking students who aren’t yet American citizens a chance to earn their citizenship.

Romney's Rebuttal
Romney offers no rebuttal to Obama's education plan on his website, so here's a link to a piece featuring an interview he did on FoxNews.

 Mitt Romney
 Summarized from Romney's Website

• Mitt Romney believes that the long-term strategy for getting America’s economy back on track is ensuring a world class education for American students. Global competitiveness begins in the classroom. In order to achieve this goal, students must have the skills to succeed in the workforce, ensuring that the promise of opportunity in this country remains strong.
• As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt saw what a state can do with a culture of high expectations, accountability for results, and increased parental choice. During the third year of his term, the state’s fourth and eighth grade students ranked first in the nation in both reading and math. Massachusetts was the first state to achieve this goal and has remained the nation’s educational leader to this day. Mitt’s experience in Massachusetts reinforced the importance of innovating and duplicating, taking the best ideas from states that are succeeding and replicating them across the country.
• Mitt also expanded access to high-quality public charter schools. When the 85% Democratic legislature passed a bill putting a moratorium on any new charter, Mitt vetoed the bill. He believes that no parent should be forced to send their child to a failing school and that increased choice translates into better outcomes for all students. He also realizes that teacher quality is integral to student success. States should recruit the best and brightest into the classroom and reward them for a job well done.
• During his time in Massachusetts, Mitt promoted access to higher education for students. He proposed the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship, providing a four-year tuition-free scholarship to any state institution for any Massachusetts students that scored among the top 25 percent in their school. Mitt also defended the requirement that high school students pass a rigorous test to graduate and saw students and educators respond to heightened accountability with dramatically improved performance.
• Part of an opportunity society is rewarding hard work and success. Mitt believes education is a key to the American dream, and students must be encouraged to pursue that dream and work hard to achieve it. Post-secondary education cannot become a luxury for the few; instead, all students should have the opportunity to attend a college that best suits their needs. Whether it is public or private, traditional or online, college must be available and affordable.
• Improving education in America is a priority for Mitt. He knows what can be accomplished when governors are empowered to reform their education systems, when education entrepreneurs are given the freedom to innovate, when teachers are rewarded for boosting student achievement, and when students are empowered to select a school or education program that meets their needs. Americans have long been known for their creativity, ingenuity, and bold vision for our country, and this attitude must apply to our education system.

 Obama's Rebuttal (Summarized from Obama's Website)

• Mitt Romney's current advice to students is that they "shop around" for more affordable tuition or borrow money from their parents, a stark contrast to President Obama's belief that government investment in education is key to a strong and growing economy.
• Romney would let the American Opportunity Tax Credit expire, hurting more than 9 million hardworking families trying to send their children to college.
• In Romney's first year as governor of Massachusetts, K-12 public schools saw the second-largest percentage cuts per student in the country. Under Romney, state college costs skyrocketed, and when he left office, Massachusetts' state colleges were among the most expensive in the country. Today, he's proposing a national school voucher program with no plan to fix failing schools.
• Romney has refused to stand by teachers in calling for more manageable class sizes, writing that the effort to keep class sizes down "may actually hurt education more than it helps. 
• Mitt Romney has publically stated that if elected "The Department of Education, I will either consolidate with another agency, or perhaps make it a heck of a lot smaller."

Conclusion
So in summary, Obama wants to continue government investment in American education, while Romney wants to let schools fend for themselves and be as hands off as possible, which sounds a lot like the candidates' healthcare plans.
Turn in Friday for the Superhero opinions.

~James

Healthcare Plans

For this week's issue, we'll look at candidates' Healthcare Plans. Once again, all information and videos are taken directly from the candidates' websites, either in part or in whole, unless otherwise noted, with minimal alteration to clarify and streamline information.

Barack Obama
Summarized from Obama's Website

• Before health reform, insurance premiums were skyrocketing, and the shared cost of caring for the uninsured added $1,000 to the typical family’s policy. President Obama passed the Affordable Care Act to restore healthcare as a basic cornerstone of middle-class security in America. The Affordable Care Act will make healthcare more affordable for families and small businesses and brings much needed transparency to the insurance industry. When fully implemented, the Affordable Care Act will keep insurance companies from taking advantage of consumers, including denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and cancelling coverage when someone gets sick. Because of the new law, 34 million more Americans will gain coverage, many of which will be able to afford insurance for the first time. Once the law is fully implemented, about 95 percent of Americans under age 65 will have insurance.
• Under the new act, working families are protected from losing their health care or being forced into bankruptcy when a family member gets sick or is in an accident. Families have the security of knowing their health insurance will be there when they need it most. Insurance companies are now required to justify rate hikes and provide rebates if they don’t spend at least 80 percent of premiums on care instead of overhead, marketing, and profits, and consumers have the ability to appeal to an independent third party when insurance companies refuse to cover services or care. As many as 9 million consumers are expected to get up to $1.4 billion in rebates because the President passed the Affordable Care Act.
• Starting in 2014, all Americans will have access to affordable health insurance no matter their circumstances—whether they change jobs, lose their job, decide to start a business, or retire early. Purchasing private insurance in the new state-based health insurance exchanges could save middle-class families who can’t get employer-provided insurance thousands of dollars. Once fully implemented, the law will slow health care premium growth rates, adding another $2,000 to family savings by 2019, and the law is expected to reduce the deficit by $127 billion from 2012 to 2021.
• Fact: The Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) provides insurance to people with health conditions who have been uninsured for six months, helping those with cancer or other serious conditions to get the treatment they need.
• Before the Affordable Care Act, more than half of all private insurance plans included a lifetime limit on coverage, and nearly 20,000 people hit a lifetime cap each year. The Affordable Care Act banned these caps, and those who had already hit a lifetime limit will be eligible for unlimited coverage. Also, young adults are now eligible to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans as they enter the workforce, until they turn 26. Since the health care law passed, 3.1 million young adults, traditionally the group least likely to be insured, gained insurance because of the Affordable Care Act.
• More than 47 million Medicare beneficiaries now have access to free health services, including an annual wellness visit, mammograms, and other health screenings, to help detect and treat medical conditions early. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, nearly 3.6 million seniors who fell into the Medicare “doughnut hole” last year saved an average of $604 on prescription drugs.
•  Before the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies could deny coverage to children with medical conditions. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, as many as 17 million children with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied health insurance. Also, all new insurance plans are required to cover certain preventive services without charging a co-pay or deductible.
• Millions of small businesses are now eligible for a tax credit to help pay for their health care premiums. The credit will increase to cover 50 percent of premium costs in 2014.
  Under the Affordable Care Act, help for small businesses—including the new insurance exchanges—will reduce small business health care spending by nearly 9 percent, according to independent estimates.

Romney's Rebuttal (Summarized From Romney's Website)

• The transformation in American health care set in motion by Obamacare will take us in precisely the wrong direction. The bill, itself more than 2,400 pages long, relies on a dense web of regulations, fees, subsidies, excise taxes, exchanges, and rule-setting boards to give the federal government extraordinary control over every corner of the health care system. The costs are commensurate: Obamacare added a trillion dollars in new health care spending. To pay for it, the law raised taxes by $500 billion on everyone from middle-class families to innovative medical device makers, and then slashed $500 billion from Medicare.
• While Obamacare may create a new health insurance entitlement, it will only worsen the system’s existing problems. When was the last time a massive government program lowered cost, improved efficiency, or raised the consistency of service? Obamacare will violate that crucial first principle of medicine: “do no harm.” It will make America a less attractive place to practice medicine, discourage innovators from investing in life-saving technology, and restrict consumer choice.
• In short, President Obama’s trillion dollar federal takeover of the U.S. health care system is a disaster for the federal budget, a disaster for the constitutional principles of federalism, and a disaster for the American people.

 Mitt Romney
 Summarized from Romney's Website

• On his first day in office, Mitt Romney will issue an executive order that paves the way for the federal government to issue Obamacare waivers to all fifty states. He will then work with Congress to repeal the full legislation as quickly as possible. In place of Obamacare, Mitt will pursue policies that give each state the power to craft a health care reform plan that is best for its own citizens. The federal government’s role will be to help markets work by creating a level playing field for competition.
• Mitt will begin by returning states to their proper place in charge of regulating local insurance markets and caring for the poor, uninsured, and chronically ill. States will have both the incentive and the flexibility to experiment, learn from one another, and craft the approaches best suited to their own citizens. Mitt will also block grant Medicaid and other payments to states, limit federal standards and requirements on both private insurance and Medicaid coverage, ensure flexibility to help the uninsured, including public-private partnerships, exchanges, subsidies, the chronically ill, including high-risk pools, reinsurance, and risk adjustment, and offer innovation grants to explore non-litigation alternatives to dispute resolution.
• Competition drives improvements in efficiency and effectiveness, offering consumers higher quality goods and services at lower cost.  It can have the same effect in the health care system, if given the chance to work. Mitt would cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits, empower individuals and small businesses to form purchasing pools, prevent discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions who maintain continuous coverage, and facilitate IT interoperability.
• For markets to work, consumers must have the information and the power to make decisions about their own care.  Letting the patient determine everything about their process will drive quality up and cost down while ensuring that services are designed to provide what Americans actually want. Mitt would end tax discrimination against the individual purchase of insurance, allow consumers to purchase insurance across state lines, unshackle HSAs by allowing funds to be used for insurance premiums, promote "co-insurance" products, promote alternatives to "fee for service", and encourage "Consumer Reports"-type ratings of alternative insurance plans.

 Obama's Rebuttal (Summarized from Obama's Website)

• Mitt Romney is trying to convince the American people that he does not support a federal individual health care mandate, even though an individual mandate was a fundamental component of his own 2006 Massachusetts health care law, which he praised as a model for the nation.. That law was one of the models for the Affordable Care Act, but Romney insists that he has “opposed the idea of a federal mandate from the beginning” and that “the last thing” he’d ever do would be “to take what we had done for one state and impose it on the entire nation.” As is often the case with Romney, he had the opposite view just a few years ago.
• Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are attempting to hide their plan to end Medicare behind false attacks on President Obama. Obamacare protects benefits for the elderly, but the Romney-Ryan budget would put millionaires before seniors’ health care. 
•  Dedicated to repealing health reform, Mitt Romney said he doesn’t think all uninsured people with pre-existing conditions should be able to get coverage: “If they are 45 years old and they show up and say I want insurance because I have heart disease, it’s like, ‘Hey guys. We can’t play the game like that.’ You’ve got to get insurance when you are well.”
• If Romney repealed Obamacare, he would hurt millions of Americans in at least these five ways:
  1. Millions of Americans could lose access to preventive services, including cancer screenings, blood pressure tests, and flu shots. [Source: HHS]
     
  2. Insurance companies could continue to deny coverage to as many as 129 million people with a pre-existing condition if they try to buy insurance on their own. [Source: HealthCare.gov]
     
  3. Young people could be kicked off their parents’ insurance when they turn 18 or graduate from college, instead of being covered until they are 26. [Source: HHS]
     
  4. Americans who fall into the Medicare “doughnut hole” would lose crucial discounts on prescriptions. [Source: HHS]
     
  5. Insurance companies could go back to spending as much as 40% of premiums on administrative overhead like CEO salaries and marketing. [Source: Healthcare.gov]
     
• With Mitt Romney at the helm, the GOP has been steadily chipping away at women’s health and women’s rights. They oppose abortion rights and have pledged to “get rid of” Planned Parenthood funding. Even worse, Rep. Todd Akin—in explaining his opposition to abortion even in cases of rape—said victims of “legitimate rape” don’t get pregnant because “the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down.” Akin’s egregious, false, and deeply disturbing view only exemplifies how extreme the Republican Party—led by Romney and Ryan—has become on issues important to women. Take a look at where the GOP ticket stands on women’s health:
• Redefine rape: Ryan co-sponsored a bill that, among other things, narrowed the definition of rape to “forcible rape.” As the National Women’s Law Center explained, the proposal “speaks to a distinction between rape where there must be some element of force in order to rise to the standard, and rape where this is not ... it takes us back to a time where just saying no was not enough.” 
• Ban abortion even in cases of rape or incest: Romney backed a proposal to outlaw all abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. He also supports the Republican Party platform, which includes a Human Life Amendment that bans abortion without those exceptions. Ryan co-sponsored a personhood bill that defines life as beginning at conception—a definition that would mean “abortion and some forms of birth control could be construed as murder.”
• Employer control over birth control coverage: Romney said “of course” he supports a bill that would’ve allowed any employer to deny women coverage for birth control. Ryan co-sponsored a similar proposal in the House and called the Obamacare rule that provides access to contraception without out-of-pocket costs “an affront to religious liberty.”
• Defund Planned Parenthood: Romney pledged to “get rid of” funding for Planned Parenthood. Ryan repeatedly voted to eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides crucial health services to women across the country. All federal funding goes towards medical services like reproductive health services, birth control, cancer screenings—but not abortion services.
• Every day, women across American grapple with extremely difficult and deeply personal health decisions that should be made between a woman and her doctor, not dictated by politicians. While President Obama is committed to protecting a woman’s right to make her own health decisions, the Romney-Ryan ticket would “take us back to the policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century.”
• At a press conference with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Sandra Fluke cited the Republican Party's attitudes and actions toward Planned Parenthood as indicative of how extreme the party has become—and just how dangerous their agenda is for women. "I just find it astonishing that the first bill that this House of Representatives chose to pass was a bill to defund Planned Parenthood. When they chose to defund Planned Parenthood, that was literally the choice to take away breast cancer screenings, cervical cancer screenings, and access to contraception. I don't understand the mindset that says that's the most important, critical thing to do. Day one, we need to take away breast cancer screenings for women? Mr. Ryan was part of that decision. Mr. Romney has endorsed that decision."

Conclusion
In summary, Obama has robust and inclusive plan to help get the same healthcare services to as many Americans as possible, while Romney wants to leave healthcare to individual states by removing as much federal involvement and funding as possible.
Turn in Friday for the Superhero opinions.
~James

Energy and the Environmental Plans

For this week's issue, we look at candidates' Energy and Environmental Plans, and since the VPs are in support of their running mate's policies, I've omitted their sections, which I'll do for future posts unless they have some significant contribution. Again, all information and videos are taken directly from the candidates' websites, either in part or in whole, unless otherwise noted, with minimal alteration to clarify and streamline information.

Barack Obama
Summarized from Obama's Website

•   President Obama has made protecting the environment a priority, moving America toward energy independence and cleaner air and water, all of which has helped create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the clean energy industry.
• President Obama has enacted the largest expansion of land and water conservation and protected wilderness in a generation in addition to creating the America's Great Outdoors initiative to develop a community-led conservation and recreation agenda for the 21st century
• President Obama is committed to putting an All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy in place to develop every available source of energy in America while ensuring  Americans never have to choose between protecting the environment and strengthening the economy.
• President Obama has announced the opening of public lands for investments in clean energy and has committed his administration to approve projects by the end of 2012 that will increase renewable generation capacity to power 3 million homes as well as have taken major steps to develop offshore wind resources, including the approving country's first ever offshore wind farm which will provide clean electricity to power more than 200,000 homes and taken steps to streamline future offshore wind projects. Obama's administration has also approved the construction of 16 commercial-scale solar facilities, five wind and eight geothermal projects on public lands that are expected to power a further 1.3 million homes and support 12,500 jobs.
• President Obama has made an agreement with auto manufacturers to improve the overall fuel economy of America's automobiles to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, almost double the 27.5 miles per gallon standard that was in place when Obama took office. The Obama administration's groundbreaking standards for cars and light trucks will save American families an average of $8,200 in gas costs per vehicle by 2025, and the standards will also cut vehicles' greenhouse gas pollution in half, reducing a major cause of climate change.
• President Obama has set a 10-year goal for America to develop and deploy cost-effective clean coal technology and to have several commercial demonstration projects running within four years. The Recovery Act invested substantially in carbon capture and sequestration research, including 22 projects across four different areas of carbon capture-and-storage research and development. Under President Obama, America has implemented numerous initiatives to improve miner health and safety, and 2011 saw the second-fewest miner deaths on record.
• Under President Obama's direction, the Environmental Protection Agency has issued the first-ever national standards for mercury emissions and other dangerous toxins  from coal- and oil-fired power plants. These new safeguards are helping to clear our skies, preventing 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks and 130,000 new cases of asthma each year.
• Obama's New Energy for America plan will help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future, save more oil than America currently import the Middle East and Venezulea combined within 10 years, put 1 million plug-in hybrid cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon on the road by 2015 that we will work to make sure are built in America, create a new $7,000 Tax Credit for purchasing Advanced Vehicles, ensure 25 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2025 and implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.

Romney's Rebuttal (Summarized From Romney's Website)

• The most active regulation group in the federal government is the Environmental Protection Agency, with Obama's war on carbon dioxide, the most far-reaching environmental regulatory scheme in American history is the highest-profile effort by the EPA, who continue to issue new regulations touching on countless things that continue to drive up costs, hinder business investments and destroy jobs. In August 2011 Cass Sunstein, Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal announced the results of an "unprecedentedly ambitious government-wide review" of regulations that if implemented would result in a total annual savings of approximately $2 billion, small compared to the over $9 billion in new regulatory costs proposed or implemented by the Obama administration.
• The first three years of the Obama administration have witnessed energy and environmental policies that have stifled the domestic energy sector. President Obama and the regulatory bodies under his control have taken measures to limit energy exploration and restrict development in sectors like oil and coal in ways that sap economic performance, curtail growth, and kill jobs. As the Obama administration wages war against oil and coal, it has been spending billions of dollars on alternative energy forms and touting its creation of “green” jobs. But these “green” technologies are typically far too expensive to compete in the marketplace since they generate little profit, which unsurprisingly has failed to create an economic boom.

 Mitt Romney
 Summarized from Romney's Website

• Romney will make efforts to safeguard the environment, but not at the cost of American jobs. The first step will be to stream line regulations to facilitate rapid progress in the development of our domestic reserves of oil and natural gas and allow for further investment in nuclear power. Other steps include creating one-stop shop to streamline permitting process for approval of common activities, implement fast-track procedures for companies with establish safety records to conduct pre-approved activities in pre-approved ares with minimal oversight, ensure environmental laws properly account for cost in regulatory process, edit the Clean Air Act to remove all oversight on carbon dioxide production, Expand NRC capabilities for the approval of alternate nuclear reactor designs and streamline the process to ensure that licensing decisions for reactors on or adjacent to approved sites, using newly approved designs, are complete within two years. 
• According to Romney, America has been blessed with a cornucopia of carbon-based energy resources, an development of them has been a pathway to prosperity in the past and should be in the future, so he'll conduct a comprehensive survey of America's energy reserves, start using America's energy reserves, expand opportunities for resource developers to forge partnerships with neighboring countries, support the construction and fast tracking of pipelines to bring Canadian oil to America, reduce regulation of shale gas development and extraction trough processes like hydraulic fracturing. The failure of windmills and solar plants to turn significant profits also requires the need to move alternative energy funding to basic research utilizing long term, apolitical  funding mechanisms like ARPA-E.

 Obama's Rebuttal (Summarized from Obama's Website)

• Romney's rhetoric that he wants to make America energy independent by 2020 doesn't match his actual policies, which would do nothing to help America achieve that goal. Romney is calling for more drilling and fracking with fewer safeguards. Romney wants to maintain the $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies for oil and gas companies that are making near-record profits, while eliminating a clean energy tax credit that supports tens of thousands of jobs. Romney's plan to "drill, baby, drill" while cutting critical investments in wind, solar and biofuels will do nothing to reduce America's dependence foreign oil and end thousands of jobs across the country. Romney has made it clear that he opposes the wind production tax credit and all incentives for clean energy, which would pull the rug out from under our growing clean energy sector, which supports thousands of jobs across the country.

Conclusion
In summary, Obama wants to back green technologies and reduce America's use of oil, while Romney wants to get as much business going as possible with as few restrictions as possible. Well, maybe this time we'll see a less one-sided result from the superheroes on Friday.
~James