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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged MItt Romney

1. September 18, 2012 10:48 AM

   Medicare: Where’s the evidence that vouchers save money?

   The National Journal seeks some, and comes up empty

   By Trudy Lieberman

   Margot Sanger-Katz, a National Journal reporter who has been brave enough to question conventional wisdom surrounding health policy—she reported that elements of the Affordable Care Act “designed to lower costs will likely raise them instead”—has now taken a hard look at the claims and rhetoric sloshing around about vouchers lowering the government’s Medicare bill. She asked a reasonable question, one...

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2. June 25, 2012 06:50 AM

   Romney’s ‘job killer’ narrative: time for an X-ray

   Some reporters are asking: Does Obamacare really destroy jobs?

   By Trudy Lieberman

   ONNtv.com, which bills itself as Ohio’s channel for news, is one of the latest media outlets to casually pass along one of Mitt Romney’s favorite campaign messages—the one that blames Obamacare for "killing jobs." ONN reporter Jim Heath, traveling with Romney on his campaign bus, sat down for a one-on-one with the presumptive nominee. Romney told Heath: “Get rid of...

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3. June 27, 2011 05:13 PM

   Globe Delivers its Verdict on Romneycare

   A good—if imperfect—example of policy-oriented reporting

   By Greg Marx

   On Sunday, the Boston Globe published the second installment in its two-part series on “Romneycare,” the Massachusetts health care overhaul passed in 2006. Though not as buzz-worthy as the first part of the series — which tracked the back-room negotiations in which then-governor Mitt Romney came to support the program, and particularly the controversial individual mandate — the article offers...

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4. May 23, 2011 03:55 PM

   A Great Catch by Ben Smith

   Belly-aching about the presidential field is nothing new

   By Greg Marx

   The announcement by Mitch Daniels, the Republican governor of Indiana, that he won’t run for president in 2012 seems likely to spark the latest round of commentary about the supposed shallowness of the GOP field. But a sharp post from Politico’s Ben Smith offers a useful corrective to that narrative. Smith unearths from the archives of The New York Times...

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5. August 24, 2012 04:04 PM

   A laurel to Jackie Calmes of The New York Times

   She begins to X-ray the Romney/Ryan Medicare plan

   By Trudy Lieberman

   This week’s laurel goes to Jackie Calmes of The New York Times for reporting the increasing skepticism in health policy circles about claims from the Romney-Ryan ticket that Medicare beneficiaries will be hurt because the president’s health reform law cuts $716 billion from future Medicare spending and puts the savings into subsidies for the uninsured called for by the...

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6. February 27, 2012 04:29 PM

   A Medicare Memo to Campaign Reporters

   Tailing Mitt on Medicare and Social Security, too

   By Trudy Lieberman

   Dear Colleagues: I have just returned from a reporting trip to Southeast Arkansas, where the folks I visited have very little. They certainly don’t have good health. Some are crippled by bad knees messed up from on-their-feet jobs. Most have diabetes. Some have had strokes. They are lucky, though, that they have Medicare. Without it, they probably would have died...

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7. November 1, 2012 06:50 AM

   A muddy Bloomberg story sets up Romney’s Jeep attack

   The wire's poorly worded story is misread

   By Ryan Chittum

   Mitt Romney's gotten in hot water with the nation's burgeoning horde of fact checkers by asserting that Jeep "is thinking of moving all production to China." That's clearly false. Chrysler is considering adding Jeep production over there, not closing up shop here and outsourcing everything to China. But Romney preceded his claim by saying he'd "seen a story" that told...

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8. November 15, 2012 01:12 PM

   An election post-mortem on Medicare coverage

   Coverage? Yes. Guidance? Not so much

   By Trudy Lieberman

   In mid-August, when Paul Ryan burst on the scene with his voucher scheme for Medicare, the 47-year old program suddenly became hot news. Until then, the media had paid scant attention to Medicare, except in the fall when they served up some “how-to” stories for choosing new Medicare Advantage plans. This time it was different. Ryan’s plans for transforming Medicare...

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9. October 23, 2012 11:26 AM

   Ask Obama and Romney this: Where is Africa?

   An enormous opportunity for the US could slip past

   By Howard W. French

   Over the final days of the campaign, CJR is running a series of pieces under the headline “Ask Obama This” and “Ask Romney This,” suggesting themes and questions that reporters and pundits can put to the presidential candidates. So far we’ve asked President Obama about his short term jobs plan and about housing, and Governor Romney about his plans for...

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10. October 24, 2012 03:12 PM

    Ask Obama This: Can you imagine criminal justice reform?

    A nearly forgotten topic that impacts the budget, families, and communities

    By Farai Chideya

    Over the final days of the campaign, CJR is publishing a series of pieces under the headline “Ask Obama This” and “Ask Romney This,” suggesting themes and questions that reporters and pundits can consider posing to the presidential candidates. This installment focuses on questions that could (and should) be asked of both candidates, but that seems particularly pressing for the...

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11. November 2, 2012 10:28 AM

    Ask Romney This: What will replace Obamacare?

    A vague healthcare plan raises many questions

    By Trudy Lieberman

    Over the final weeks of the campaign, CJR has been publishing a series of pieces under the headline “Ask Obama This” and “Ask Romney This,” suggesting themes and questions that reporters and pundits can consider posing to the presidential candidates. There’s not much time left for that, of course, but the questions this series raises will be around for the...

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12. September 19, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: ‘makers and takers’ edition

    Romney's "47 percent" comment continues to reverberate

    By Ryan Chittum

    A big part of the problem with Mitt Romney's "47 percent" characterization, as I wrote yesterday, is that it uses federal income tax to snooker people not paying close attention into thinking half the country pays no taxes at all. That's cherry picking the most progressive part of the tax system to paint a picture of half a country of...

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13. September 11, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: Bain’s LBOs, Star Tribune, Wolff on JRC

    ProPublica reports that the "turnaround artist" narrative is off

    By Ryan Chittum

    ProPublica's Jesse Eisinger looks at Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, calling into question the narrative that it was largely about turning around struggling businesses: Yet in addition, under Romney's tenure, Bain often sought out solid businesses that didn't need to be turned around. The reason: Such companies could operate under the burden of the enormous debt that Bain would layer...

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14. January 25, 2012 02:32 AM

    Audit Notes: Dimon the Persecuted, Mitt’s Taxes, Minimum Wage

    By Ryan Chittum

    Yesterday we heard press favorite Jamie Dimon sputtering about how swipe-fee regulations, which capped how much big banks could gouge merchants for debit-card transactions, were "a gross miscarriage of justice." Today, Charlie Gasparino of Fox Business sits down with Dimon and gets some nice quotes out of him on how Obama treats the "fat cats": "I've disagreed right from the...

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15. September 13, 2012 11:30 AM

    Audit Notes: NYT and Bain, Dimon’s Comp Committee, 401(k)s

    Too much focus on Romney, who left the company years before the alleged collusion

    By Ryan Chittum

    It's great that The New York Times is going aggressively after court documents in a big private-equity bid-rigging lawsuit, filing a motion to get documents unsealed. But I wonder how relevant it is to mention its former CEO Mitt Romney so prominently in a story about alleged anticompetitive behavior that occurred at least two years after he left the firm....

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16. October 5, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: Romney and taxes, prison phone racket, WSJ

    The Atlantic eyes the Republican's corporate tax plan

    By Ryan Chittum

    Nobody can figure out what exactly Mitt Romney wants to do with taxes. His plan is mathematically impossible, and Wednesday night's debate just confused matters even more. The candidate actually said at one point in the debate that "I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans," which is either false or an epic flipflop. By the lack of...

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17. January 12, 2012 08:01 PM

    Audit Notes: Romney’s Black Box, Banker Probe, Laffer Curveball

    By Ryan Chittum

    Politico makes a good point about how reporters are having something of a hard time assessing Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain Capital: So far, the definitive and comprehensive answers to these questions have proven elusive to even the country’s best journalists because of the very private nature of private equity. The greatest privacy-destroying force known to man — an American...

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18. August 15, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: Romney’s taxes, NBC’s win, turning off the Web

    By Ryan Chittum

    Joe Nocera writes about the sharp choice facing voters in November, and so it is. But this strikes me as a wrongheaded sentiment for a journalist to have (emphasis mine): Ever since the campaign entered the postprimary, preconvention phase, with the two candidates turning their attention to each other, it has been a depressing spectacle. The Democrats have demanded that...

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19. July 17, 2012 01:55 AM

    Audit Notes: Statute of limitations, whither The Daily, Romney’s taxes

    The WSJ on how the clock may (or may not) be running out on the SEC

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Wall Street Journal is good to keep an eye on the statutes of limitation clocks that are running out on Wall Street fraud. The paper reports that a federal court ruled last year that the five year statute of limitations "start to tick only when wrongdoing becomes apparent or should have been discovered, not when it occurred": Nevertheless, the...

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20. January 9, 2012 07:59 PM

    Audit Notes: Swiped, Hit List, Journo Demographics

    By Ryan Chittum

    Bloomberg News has an interesting story on a dispute between a Utah restaurant and Visa and Mastercard. The card companies say the restaurant was lax about protecting card numbers that ended up being used in more than a million dollars worth of fraud—something the restaurant's owners deny. What's stunning is that the bank just started withdrawing money from the restaurant's...

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