Mr Arthuis said: “What creates ambiguity is to call the tax a “social charge”, as when one is a foreigner one can rightly claim that one doesn’t gain from as many social benefits as the French.”
Meanwhile property experts said that the taxes could cause house prices to fall in France. This is because people will be reluctant to buy houses knowing that they will be hit with heavy taxes when they come to sell the properties. The taxes will also deter people from selling houses, causing the market to stagnate.
Jean-Michel Crassat, secretary general of the Dordogne chamber for the French real estate agency federation (FNAIM), said: "There is a risk that it will drive prices down."
"Sales prices have already hit a 130,000-euro ceiling in the region, and anyone who bought five years ago is liable to sell for less than their purchase price right now. But this might accelerate the drop as some people throw in the towel and say: 'That's it, I'm off, I don't want to be a cash cow any longer," he said.
"It could also slow down purchases as people don't want to buy in a country where you're taxed to the hilt."
"I think it's a monument idiocy as it will likely engender fraud and under the table practices that had all but been stamped out. Too much tax kills tax."
Patrick Delas, a solicitor at Russell-Cooke Solicitors in London, said: “I am not sure this will affect the property market immediately but people may think twice about selling and the market will certainly slow down.”
Cathy Dursapt, an estate agent in Eymet in the Dordogne, said she had fielded an “avalanche” of calls from concerned customers and acquaintances about the tax rises. But she remained cautious, saying: “I’m French and I tell them never to believe a French law until it takes effect”.
Second-home owners were aghast at the news.
Nicola and Oliver Turner, both 43, bought a rundown barn in the hamlet of Monbazillac, rural Dordogne five years ago for 100,000 euros. Mr Turner has painstakingly restored the property himself.
Given all the restoration work, their holiday home is now on the market for 300,000 euros, meaning they stand to pay up to 69,000 euros given the new capital gains tax.
Speaking from her home in Hertfordshire, Mrs Turner said she was “gutted” about the new hike.
“As far as the French is concerned it’s all profit and we can’t offset our expenses to bring the profit down. We’re not going to be in a good position once it’s sold, we’ll basically come out of it with nothing.”
The rise in tax on rental income will be retrospective, from Jan 1 this year. The increase in capital gains tax may apply from this week, and certainly by the end of the month, meaning property owners will have little or no time to escape the increased tax by selling their homes.
Treasury sources said the department is examining France's proposals. "If there is any discrimination we will challenge it," the source said.
Jean-Sébastien Dumont, international tax lawyer based in Paris, warned that the new measures were likely “the tip of the iceberg” in terms of new tax for foreign home owners.
“We just had a corrective tax law, but we all know that the lion’s share of the new measures were not announced yesterday but will be rolled out in the autumn.”
One opposition politician dubbed the measure a “250 million-euro lie” on the part of President François Hollande’s Socialist government, as it had specifically pledged not to raise taxes for non-residents in its electoral programme.
Olivier Cadic, a UK based centre-Right member of the Council for the French Abroad, said he found the charges “scandalous”.
“The Socialists made it clear during their electoral campaign that they would not impose any specific tax for non-residents bar in Switerland and Luxembourg. This is proof that they lied to the tune of 250 million euros per year,” he said.
Karen Tait, the editor for French Property News, said: “It’s not good news, but it has to be put in perspective to a certain degree. If your French home is your main home, it doesn’t affect you at all."
“A lot of British home owners also actually don’t rent out their second homes,” preferring to use them for vacations or to house travelling friends. She felt that since groups strongly campaigned against a similar, dropped proposal by Nicolas Sarkozy, “there’s some hope the same thing could happen again.”
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise's split: Is privacy the best policy? - Los Angeles Times
Forget what you might have heard at that Fourth of July barbecue: Katie Holmes wants to keep her divorce from Tom Cruise as private as possible and has not filed for an emergency custody hearing, her attorney said Thursday.
"The reports about an emergent filing last Friday are incorrect. Other than her action for divorce, the only pending application filed by Ms. Holmes remains her request for an anonymous caption,” attorney Jonathan Wolfe told L.A. Now.
Cruise has yet to file any papers, TMZ reported, citing sources who said the actor was likely to file custodial papers in New York first, while requesting that the case be moved to California, largely seen as the couple's primary state of residence. Holmes filed for divorce June 28 in New York, seeking primary residential and legal custody of their daughter, Suri.
"Anonymous caption" means papers are filed with initials only, or sans names entirely, making the case harder for journalists and other interested parties to track through the court system, attorney Michael Stutman, a New York divorce specialist, told Buzzfeed. But fame doesn't come with a cloak of invisibility included -- rather, Stutman said, making the names public would have to compromise the safety of the divorcing parties or their children for the anonymity request to be affirmed.
In any case, Holmes' alleged desire for privacy could be just what the etiquette of the situation calls for, from the divorcing parties as well as the famous folks around them, nationally certified manners expert Lisa Gaché told The Times.
In other words, fellow celebs Will and Jada Smith were on target — "You have to keep it light and breezy," said the Beverly Hills Manners owner — as they ignored the quote-seeking paparazzi at LAX the other day.
PHOTOS: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes through the years
Alas, Gaché acknowledged, people who are behaving politely "can sound rather boring" to folks who are looking for more dish on the split.
Witness Katie's big revelation to the New York Daily News on Wednesday: "I'm all right," Holmes reportedly said. "Thank you." ¡Escandalo!
(Wait, really, ¿Escandalo? Um, no, never mind, no scandalo. But very polite, thank you. Not bad for a woman with paparazzi staking out her building, not to mention the Whole Foods.)
But "manners aren't milquetoast," Gaché said. "Katie would do well to channel the likes of Grace Kelly and Jackie O," the latter of whom she recently portrayed in a TV miniseries. Jackie "handled things gracefully, she always had this persona that was poised, put together, and she never let her guard down."
Though it might not always be possible, that would be the best posture for Holmes to adopt, she said: One where privacy and respect come first for all parties involved, including daughter Suri and the Suri of the future, who will eventually be able to look back on how her parents treated each other during their split.
"Maybe she can channel that poise and ... and maintain her moral compass."
And if the custody fight were to turn ugly, with one or both parties going off the rails -- and perhaps weaponizing personal information gleaned from Scientology "auditing" sessions? "We cannot control what another person does," Gaché said, "only the way we respond."
News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch went a bit off the reservation over the weekend, commenting on the TomKat divorce in a tweet that could be an unleashing of his journalist hounds to pursue a Scientology angle to the story, or simply a dude sticking his nose into other people's business.
"Scientology back in news. Very weird cult, but big, big money involved with Tom Cruise either number two or three in hiearchy," Murdoch tweeted, adding, "Watch Katie Holmes and Scientology story develop. Something creepy, maybe even evil, about these people."
"What Rupert Murdoch said only did Rupert Murdoch a disservice," Gaché said, though the media baron might disagree.
"Since Scientology tweet hundreds of attacks," Murdoch wrote hours after his first blurts. "Expect they will increase and get worse and maybe threatening. Still stick to my story."
Sources with Team Tom, incidentally, told TMZ on Thursday that the divorce has nothing to do with Scientology, which they said Katie had embraced fully even when her other half was away filming. While not disclosing what the divorce is about, they accused Team Katie of spreading that story line as a way to hurt Cruise.
Not polite.
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Follow Christie D'Zurilla on Twitter and Google+. Follow the Ministry of Gossip @LATcelebs.Source: www.latimes.com
Ukrainians polarised over language law - BBC News
On Wednesday, just days after the country celebrated the final whistle of the European football championships, Ukraine once again demonstrated its position as one of the former Soviet Union's more turbulent political cultures.
Nearly 1,000 demonstrators clashed with scores of black-helmeted riot police in the capital Kiev, with both sides using pepper spray and law enforcement officials wielding batons to disperse the crowds.
The protesters had gathered on the previous day, after the country's parliament unexpectedly passed a controversial law that granted official status to the Russian language in regions where it is predominantly spoken.
Language is a contentious issue in Ukraine. Many here view the use of the Ukrainian language as central to the country's identity.
They believe that - after centuries of Russian and Soviet hegemony - to be a true Ukrainian, one must speak Ukrainian.
“Start Quote
End Quote Ruslan Taxi driverI speak Russian - what's the big problem? Why do people in the west get to say who is Ukrainian and who isn't?”
Anything less is to surrender to the country's one-time cultural and political masters in Moscow - where many still view Ukraine as a Russian appendage - and ultimately threatens the country's continued independence.
Eyes on elections?"This law is sending an incredibly powerful signal that the Ukrainian language is not needed," said Roman Tsupryk, a political commentator and chairman of the editorial board of the Ukrainian weekly "Tyzhden" (Week).
"People don't see the mechanism behind it, but they will see the consequences in a year or a year and half."
People in the country's Russian-speaking east and south have a predictably different view on the matter.
They say that they are patriotic Ukrainians - just ones that speak another language - and they simply wish to have the right to speak their native tongue in courts, government offices and schools, as the new legislation stipulates.
They also bristle at the accusation - especially in the country's west, where Ukrainian is predominantly spoken - that they are any less Ukrainian than the rest of the country.
"I speak Russian - what's the big problem?" said Ruslan, a taxi driver in the eastern city of Donetsk, who asked to use only his first name.
"Why do people in the west get to say who is Ukrainian and who isn't?"
Give the intense emotions on either side of the language debate, however, the question arises why President Viktor Yanukovych's ruling Party of Regions chose this moment to stir up this particular hornet's nest?
Some analysts believe the new language law is an opening salvo in the government's campaign for parliamentary elections in October.
The law, touching on a cultural hot button, they say, serves a dual purpose - it distracts the electorate from more pressing issues like Ukraine's continued economic slump, and it riles up the political "base."
“Start Quote
End Quote Oleh Rybachuk AnalystIt's easy to provoke a conflict”
"Every time we have elections, the issue of language is there," said Oleh Rybachuk, a cabinet member in the previous government and now an independent analyst.
"Language is not so important - it is not among the top 15 priorities of the people. But for some reason, every time we have elections, we have that issue."
According to Mr Rybachuk, however, opposition politicians also welcome this issue, since it allows them to mobilise their own constituency. But this could have disastrous consequences.
"This kind of cementing of constituencies really divides the country," he says, adding that the unrest "creates space for radicals from both side."
"It's easy to provoke a conflict, to shed blood," he adds.
Granted, not all of Ukraine is divided into two opposing camps - and it remains to be seen how this pro and anti-Russian stand-off will play out among the rest of the population.
A short, informal survey around the capital Kiev, a city which speaks both Russian and Ukrainian, yielded (tentatively) some unpredictable results.
A number of native Russian speakers said that they were against giving Russian official status. They felt that ultimately Ukrainian should be the country's dominant mode of communication.
While Ukrainian speakers said that they did not oppose giving Russian a more elevated status.
"Ukrainian will win out in the end," said Svitlana, a native Ukrainian speaker who supported the new legislation.
Whether the law becomes a reality is still an open question, however.
In order for it to enter into force, it needs to be signed by the parliament speaker, who resigned in protest over its passing, and President Yanukovych.
The Ukrainian leader said that he would reach a decision after he "studied all questions" relating to the legislation.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
Tom Cruise, the bankable kook - The Guardian
What do you get the multi-millionaire global superstar who has everything? It's a question Katie Holmes must have asked herself repeatedly during her five-year marriage to Tom Cruise. When it comes to birthday presents for middle-aged men, divorce papers certainly qualify as an unorthodox gift, ranking even lower than novelty socks on the desirability scale.
Holmes's timing is particularly acute, given that she filed for divorce from Cruise in the downtime between the release of his latest movie (Rock of Ages, in which the star has a rare comic outing as a priapic soft-metal god) and his 50th birthday – a milestone for anyone, not least an action hero whose image rests on performing daring physical feats without pulling a muscle, be it leaping between moving trains or jumping up and down on a chatshow sofa.
Claims that it was Cruise's passionate commitment to his church, Scientology, which brought about the couple's irreconcilable differences have become the received wisdom.
The feverish reports that followed the divorce announcement read like the synopsis of a conspiracy thriller: Holmes resolving to abandon the marriage when she learned that Suri, her six-year-old daughter by Cruise, was being primed for a Scientology bootcamp; Holmes hiding out in her Manhattan apartment with Suri to stop the child being snatched; Holmes reporting that she had been under surveillance by sinister men in dark glasses.
Regardless of whether there is any truth in these dispatches, or Holmes simply has a savvy and long-sighted PR team at her disposal, Cruise is already being positioned as the villain in a drama yet to be properly drafted.
The curious thing is that, barring any revelations which slip through what was doubtless a prohibitive pre-nuptial confidentiality agreement, none of this should dent his movie career. Whatever it costs him in court (and some reports suggest that Holmes will leave the marriage only with what she brought to it), he is unlikely to lose a cent at the box-office.
That Rock of Ages flopped will be of little concern. Comedy is a sideline for Cruise, in the same way that other celebrities branch out into fragrances or sportswear. Action movies are what he does best, which means that his professional future looks guaranteed for the time being.
The first trailer for his action thriller Jack Reacher , adapted from Lee Child's novel One Shot, was released this week, with the film to follow in December. Cruise has returned recently from Iceland where he was shooting another action movie, Oblivion, to be released next year.
And Forbes magazine has just announced that he is the highest paid performer in the world, raking in $70m (£45.141m) in the past year, almost double the salary of his nearest rivals, Leonardo DiCaprio and Adam Sandler. No one is invincible, but Cruise is closer than most.
That much was proved by his apparent career catastrophe of six years ago. What looked to be a perfect storm of public embarrassment (the fallout from the sofa-jumping incident, in which he rampaged all over Oprah Winfrey's furniture in a display of his love for his then-fiancée Holmes), industry scorn (the head of Paramount dropped Cruise from the studio) and a string of PR disasters connected to his Scientologist beliefs (including public tussles with his former co-star Brooke Shields and Today Show presenter Matt Lauer) transpired to be not so perfect after all.
When the third Mission: Impossible movie, starring Cruise, opened a year after all the furore, it went on to gross $400m worldwide.
Even a genuinely terrible film like the action-comedy Knight and Day, which became Cruise's lowest-grossing star vehicle in 20 years, couldn't kill off fans' enthusiasm – he needed only return to the Mission: Impossible franchise a year later to bring another box-office phenomenon.
His track record so far indicates that it doesn't matter how he humiliates himself in his extra-curricular activities, or what slip-ups he makes in between his franchise outings, audiences will still accept him once he returns to the business of blowing things up and jumping from great heights while flashing his Esther Williams smile.
But that is to reckon without the Scientology factor. Jen Yamato, US west coast editor of Movieline, believes that any threat to the actor's career comes from public perception of his beliefs. "Cruise has aged exceptionally well from the days of Risky Business and Top Gun," she says, "so we can expect him to keep taking on action-oriented roles for a time — even longer than Harrison Ford. And Cruise has a way of bouncing back from PR misfires.
"The looming presence of Scientology in his life has been more difficult to ignore, and that's where the split may prove trickiest for his public image. The church's reputation for inserting its advisers into the Cruise-Holmes marriage has created the perception that Katie is escaping from a very controlling environment, making it easy for the public to take her side."
Cruise learned after his 2005 meltdown that it's advisable not to broach the subject of Scientology in press interviews. Plenty of the church's celebrity followers manage not to let its beliefs interfere with their work – the musician Beck and the actor Jason Lee (My Name Is Earl) are among those whose names are not necessarily synonymous with Scientology in the public imagination, unlike Cruise or John Travolta.
But then they don't have the same standing and cachet within the church. Cruise is its most highly prized mascot and cheerleader. David Miscavige, the head of the Church of Scientology, declared him "the most dedicated Scientologist I know".
Rupert Murdoch was moved to take the moral high ground on Twitter last week, predicting a massive fallout from the divorce. "Scientology back in news," he tweeted. "Very weird cult, but big, big money involved with Tom Cruise either number two or three in hiearchy [sic] … Watch Katie Holmes and Scientology story develop. Something creepy, maybe even evil, about these people."
While Cruise may have learned his lesson about keeping his beliefs out of his public persona, this may be one area over which he no longer has the steely control that defines him.
The suggestion from Steve Hall, a former senior Scientologist, that the church played an active part in helping Cruise to select Holmes as his third wife brings more sinister overtones to this than any one story can bear. The fact that each of Cruise's three wives has been 11 years younger than her predecessor (Holmes was 11 years the junior of Nicole Kidman, who was in turn 11 years younger than Mimi Rogers) can be dismissed as a freaky coincidence.
But if Scientology is seen to influence every decision in the actor's life, he is heading into uncharted territory. Will his career withstand the news that a revered action hero may be a passive participant in his own life?
"Cruise needs to be extra careful not to add fuel to the perception that his life is dictated by the organisation," says Yamato. "His star power at the box office could be adversely affected by a major hit to his public image, so he needs to be cautious. The custody battle over Suri will likely be a tough one, but it doesn't have to be a nasty one. Holmes has the public on her side, and any harsh move or statement on Cruise's part will quickly shift sympathies further in her favour."
It is possible to feel a certain obscure sympathy for Cruise, caught as he is in a cleft stick where he must appear fearless on screen but gentle and sensitive off it. Perhaps his movie persona is so comprehensive it undermines any attempts to depart from it. As the critic Anne Billson noted recently: "Cruise is always facing danger, yet never truly appears vulnerable. We may fear he'll burst a blood vessel when he runs very, very fast, but we never fear for him."
That spills over into his real-life travails. There is something calculated and invulnerable about the dazzling smile, the hyper-confident manner, the superhuman energy levels: all the elements that make him a dependable movie star work to erode him as a human being. You can see it in his lunges at comedy: only Arnold Schwarzenegger has been more dogged and less convincing in his efforts to advertise his sense of humour.
As Cruise enters his sixth decade, it is not the ravages of time he needs to fear (most of us don't look as good at 25 as he looks at 50) but the potential for his mysterious offscreen life to unravel the painstakingly calibrated on-screen equivalent.
Until then, it seems, he is safe. "Hollywood respects his stardom," says Yamato. "He is still Tom Cruise, after all, and when he's 'on', he's still really good. So while the industry considers him a bit of a kook, he's a bankable kook. That's really what matters in Hollywood."
Potted profile
Born: 3 July 1962, Syracuse, New York
Age: 50
Career: After eyecatching early roles in the military drama Taps and the raunchy comedy Risky Business, became a bona fide box-office star with Top Gun, and has remained on the A-list ever since. He is blockbuster material, but has branched out with less palatable roles in daring projects: as a sexually thwarted husband in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, a motivational sex guru in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia and as a ruthless hit-man in Michael Mann's Collateral.
High point: Academy Award nominations for his work in Born on the Fourth of July and Magnolia.
Low point: Jumping on Oprah's sofa; everything associated with Scientology.
What he says: "Whether it's making a film or raising my children, personally I'm striving to do the right things and to learn."
What they say: "Cruise is one of the first young actors who seems unaffected by the impact of Brando and Clift, and much more inspired by the example of a Gable or a Grant. He wants to work."–David Thomson, Biographical Dictionary of Film
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
Pennsylvania Voter ID Law Threatens To Disenfranchise Nearly 10 Percent Of State's Voters - Huffington Post
Pennsylvanians will be required to show government-issued photo identification in order to cast votes in November, thanks to a GOP-supported voter ID law signed by Gov. Tom Corbett (R) earlier this year. While supporters argued that it was a simple measure meant to combat voter fraud, figures released this week show that the law may affect more than 750,000 Pennsylvanians who don't currently possess identification cards issued by the state Department of Transportation Department.
According to the report, which compared voter registration rolls with transportation department ID databases, more than 758,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania have no driver's license -- a primary form of identification. That's 9.2 percent of the state's 8.2 million voters, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. In Philadelphia, the state's biggest city, that number balloons to 18 percent of the city's total voting population -- around 186,830 registered voters, according to the newspaper.
The Corbett administration maintained earlier that 99 percent of Pennsylvania voters already had proper identification, and therefore wouldn't need to take additional steps to cast their ballots. The voter ID law does allow for the use of other forms of identification, including U.S. passports, student ID cards with expiration dates and military ID. Because of that, state officials have shown little concern over the latest numbers.
“This thorough comparison of databases confirms that most Pennsylvanians have acceptable photo ID for voting this November,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele said in a news release. “This comparison takes into account only voters with PennDot IDs, and does not include voters who may have any of the other various acceptable forms of ID.”
State officials were also skeptical of the numbers, telling the Inquirer that some voters' status as "inactive" -- or not having voted in the past four years -- as well as the study's name-matching methodology may have contributed to some inflated figures.
The report comes as debate over voter ID efforts continues to heat up. Last month, Pennsylvania GOP House Majority Leader Mike Turzai made a comment about the legislation that opponents quickly branded as a candid admission that such laws were designed to suppress votes for the benefit of Republican candidates.
"Voter ID -- which is going to allow Gov. [Mitt] Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania -- done," Turzai told a group of cheering attendees at a Republican State Committee meeting.
Voting rights activists have charged that voter ID laws disproportionately target students, minorities and elderly voters who tend to vote Democratic. Viviette Applewhite, 93, helped demonstrate the potential consequences earlier this year when she filed a lawsuit against the Keystone State's new requirement, claiming she'd lost all forms of identification that she would need to get the proper voting documents.
Republicans have remained steadfast in claiming that the measures are necessary to prevent voter fraud, an occurrence that is, by most calculations, small.
According to frequently cited studies on voter fraud, there were a grand total of 13 "credible cases of in-person voter impersonation" -- one of the types of fraud most frequently targeted by voter ID champions -- recorded from 2000 to 2010. As Comedy Central's Indecision blog points out, exploding toilets and deaths by television are far more common.
Also on HuffPost:
Source: www.huffingtonpost.com
Obama takes the offensive on his healthcare law - Los Angeles Times
MAUMEE, Ohio — A week after the Supreme Court upheld most of President Obama's signature domestic policy achievement, the politics of healthcare held center stage in the presidential campaign, shoving aside the economic debate that has dominated most of the last several months.
In a notable shift of tactics after months of talking only minimally about healthcare in public, Obama went on the offensive Thursday and emphasized the law during a campaign bus trip through the crucial swing state of Ohio.
As he did so, his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, was on the defensive, under attack from leading conservatives for purported failures in handling the issue. The criticism reflected long-standing anxiety among conservatives that Romney's history on healthcare would make him a flawed carrier of the party's message.
Before a cheering crowd of several hundred at a rally in northwestern Ohio, Obama declared that the healthcare law was alive and well and highlighted elements that have proved popular with the public — even as the overall law has not.
"We will not go back to the days when insurance companies could discriminate against people just because they were sick," he said. "We're not going to tell 6 million young people who are now on their parents' health insurance plans that suddenly they don't have health insurance. We're not going to allow Medicare to be turned into a voucher system.
"Nobody should go bankrupt because they get sick. I'll work with anybody who wants to work with me to continue to improve our healthcare system and our healthcare laws. But the law I passed is here to stay."
As he spoke, campaign aides distributed literature listing the benefits of the law, defiantly stealing the label that Republicans have used to attack it. "Because of Obamacare," the list began.
As Obama waved the healthcare banner, Romney, vacationing in New Hampshire, seemed tongue-tied on the issue.
As governor, Romney's biggest achievement was a law that resembled Obama's in many ways, particularly in the requirement that people who could afford to do so either buy insurance or pay a fine. During the primary campaign, his rivals predicted that as the nominee, he would have trouble convincing voters that his requirement was good and Obama's virtually identical requirement was bad.
Since the Supreme Court's decision, Romney's campaign has stumbled over whether to call that requirement a "tax," as Chief JusticeJohn G. Roberts Jr.did in his opinion for the court, or a "penalty," as Romney had previously labeled it.
Republicans in Washington had seized on the tax language after the ruling, figuring that the one victory they could snatch from the court defeat was to accuse Obama of having sponsored a tax increase.
That created a potential problem for Romney because, logically, it would mean that he too, as governor, had imposed a tax increase.
On Monday, Romney's chief spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, said in an MSNBC interview that the requirement in the Obama law was a penalty, not a tax. Then on Wednesday, Romney went the other direction, saying in an interview with CBS that the requirement was a tax.
On Thursday, two of the conservative movement's leading platforms — the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard magazine — reacted by publicly upbraiding the candidate and his aides.
"The campaign looks confused in addition to being politically dumb," the Journal said, and it accused Romney's "insular staff" of "slowly squandering an historic opportunity."
In the Standard, Editor William Kristol, never a Romney fan, compared the former governor to two other Massachusetts politicians who unsuccessfully ran for president: Sen. John F. Kerry and former Gov. Michael Dukakis, both Democrats.
"So," Kristol wrote, "speaking of losing candidates from Massachusetts: Is it too much to ask Mitt Romney to get off autopilot and actually think about the race he's running?"
In a statement, Romney campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg said that "Obamacare has been and will continue to be a central issue in this campaign. It presents voters with a clear line that divides the two candidates. Gov. Romney is going to repeal Obamacare and President Obama is going to keep it."
It's unlikely that many — if any — voters will be influenced by a debate as arcane as tax versus penalty. But Obama aides hope that Romney's switch of position will highlight a bigger issue — underscoring what they see as his flips on other matters. Obama's backers have pressed that message for months, as did Romney's opponents during the Republican primaries.
The campaign also wants to highlight Romney's refusal thus far to say whether — if he is successful in pressing the repeal of Obama's policy — he would restore its most popular provisions, such as protection for people with preexisting medical conditions.
Even if he feels emboldened, Obama still has to worry about the widespread distrust of his healthcare law.
In the crowd in Maumee, for example, was a union bricklayer who showed up to cheer the candidate he hoped would be elected in November — despite his worries about the healthcare law.
"I'm excited about what he could do in a second term," said Eric Herbster, 35, who is working on the Maumee city tree crew to make ends meet until the bricklaying business picks up again. "He'll get rid of outsourcing. He's talking about keeping jobs in this country."
But the mandate that everyone buy insurance?
"I can't afford that," Herbster said. "Obamacare — that's the only thing I'm on the fence about."
mitchell.landsberg@latimes.com
Parsons reported from Maumee and Landsberg from Gilford, N.H.
David Lauter in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.
Source: www.latimes.com
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