From The Washington Post -- January 30, 2012:
By Richard Cohen
Republicans have only themselves to blame
On Saturday night, at precisely 9:19 and 30 seconds, my iPhone, my iPad, my computer and, for all I know, my toaster were informed that Herman Cain had endorsed Newt Gingrich. The ping-ping of the devices suggested that something momentous had happened — alerts from both The Post and the New York Times — but in fact it was just additional evidence that the Republican Party has become a circus: One clown endorsed another.
It’s hard to know who is the more ridiculous figure — the grandiloquent, bombastic and compulsively dishonest Gingrich, or the beguilingly ignorant Cain, a man who has never held elective office and who was reduced to speechlessness when asked a question about Libya. Nonetheless, Gingrich, his Alfred E. Neuman grin on his face, accepted the endorsement and then went on with his nihilistic campaign for the White House. This has been an exceedingly silly political season.
But it has also been a sad one. The Republican establishment acts as if this season’s goon squad of presidential candidates has come out of nowhere, an act of God — a tsunami that hit the party and receded, leaving nothing but nitwits standing. In column after column, conservative commentators lament the present condition, but not their past acquiescence as their party turned hostile to thought, reason and the two most important words in the English language: It depends.
If you ask me what I think of abortion, I’d say, “It depends.” It depends on whether you’re talking about the ninth month of pregnancy, the first, the health of the mother, the fetus — or, even, the morning-after pill. But in the Republican contest, the answer to the question is always the same: no, no and no again. Thanks for giving the matter such careful thought.
It is the same with taxes. Should they be raised? It depends. It depends on economic and fiscal conditions — and on whose taxes will be raised and by how much. The answer cannot be “No, never.” That’s not an economic position; it is an ideological one and exhibits a closed mind.
Similarly with global warming, GOP candidates are not certain it is exacerbated by industry, auto emissions and such. They take this position not because they have studied the science but because they are opposed to government regulations. They fear the solution more than they do the problem. Some also take a skeptical position regarding the theory of evolution — proof right there that there is something wrong with this theory.
This rampant anti-intellectualism is worrisome. The world is a complex place, but to deal with it, the GOP presented a parade of hopefuls who proposed nostrums or, in the case of Michele Bachmann, peddled false rumors about vaccinations. When this started I cannot say — the late Richard Hofstadter won the Pulitzer Prize for his “Anti-intellectualism in American Life” in 1964 — but the embrace of Sarah Palin by the GOP establishment has got to be noted. The lady has the gift of demagoguery and the required anti-elitism, but she knows next to nothing about almost anything — and revels in her ignorance.
Should the United States bomb Iran’s nuclear installations? It depends. Should America enable Israel to do it? It depends. How should China be handled? What about Russia and Turkey, not to mention Pakistan — our ally and a mosh pit of madmen? From the GOP candidates, the answers are simple: Bomb Iran if it goes nuclear, confront China, stare down Russia and — from the unfathomably shallow Rick Perry — kiss off Pakistan. Subtlety is banished. Yahoos stride the stage.
It is entirely appropriate that last week’s GOP debates fell between “Pawn Stars” and “American Pickers” in the 10 most-watched cable television shows. They are sheer entertainment having little to do with us and our problems. The Republican Party has veered so far from reality that Gingrich is lambasting Romney as a “Massachusetts moderate” — moderation being, as it was with the clueless Barry Goldwater, an epithet. Romney, who has all but collapsed his rib cage to conform to conservative dogma, must be perplexed. Others have prudently stayed out of the race.
The Republican establishment that has now risen up to smite the bratty Gingrich has only itself to blame. For too long it has been mute in the face of a belligerent anti-intellectualism, pretending that knowledge and experience do not matter and that Washington is a condition and not a mere city. The endorsement of Gingrich by Cain was not a bulletin. It was a feeble blip on a scope. The GOP is brain-dead.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Give 'Em Hell, Barry!!
From POLITICO -- January 25, 2012:
Congress makes an Easy Target for Obama
Barack Obama on Tuesday equated partisanship to a lack of patriotism.
By JONATHAN ALLEN and JAKE SHERMAN
Already down, Congress got kicked by President Barack Obama in the last State of the Union of his first term Tuesday night.
Republicans, wracked with worry about a soft agenda and dim prospects for escaping the “do nothing” label, sat fuming. Democrats clearly loved it.
Obama goes after Congress
The takeaway: Congress can’t — or won’t — do anything about its sorry state, even if the gridlock plays directly into the president’s political strategy.
“As long as I’m president, I will work with anyone in this chamber … But I intend to fight obstruction with action, and I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place,” Obama said early in the speech.
In concluding, he equated partisanship to a lack of patriotism, telling lawmakers that “those of us who have been sent here to serve can learn from the service of our troops.”
In between, Obama all but called the institution corrupt, saying the “deficit of trust” between Washington and the rest of the country is “at least as bad” as that between Main Street and Wall Street.
“Some of this has to do with the corrosive influence of money and politics. So together, let’s take some steps to fix that,” he said. “Send me a bill that bans insider trading by members of Congress, and I will sign it tomorrow. Let’s limited any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact. Let’s make sure people who bundle campaign contributions for Congress can’t lobby Congress.”
Never mind that it’s already illegal for members of Congress to engage in insider trading or that influence-industry insiders bundled money for Obama’s election. It was a powerful, and largely expected, condemnation of an institution that is suffering through its worst approval ratings since polling companies started measuring public attitudes toward Congress.
His remarks landed like salt in Republicans’ open wounds, following as they did on the president’s controversial decision to make “recess” appointments of a new chairman of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three members of the National Labor Relations Board when Congress had not agreed to an adjournment resolution.
Republicans know that there’s not much chance of moving an agenda now — particularly when the president sees no down side in attacking an institution that had a 9 percent approval rating in one recent poll.
“These speeches are all usually lots of rhetoric, long on promises, very short on follow through, and so we’ll if he follows through. Republicans, for our part, are prepared to work with him on tax reform, regulatory reform, reducing spending, energy security,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said.
But will those items get done?
“I think it’s going to be hard,” he said.
The tough new tack by Obama — telling Congress he would act “with or without” it — thrilled Democrats, as did the president’s economic message on taxes and benefits for the middle class.
“Newt, Romney were on the spot,” Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) said. “Because he came down for the middle class. Boom.”
He later added, “This is the beginning of the campaign, he just told you what he’s going to do for the next nine months. He’s going to pound the living daylights out of them.”
Congress makes an Easy Target for Obama
Barack Obama on Tuesday equated partisanship to a lack of patriotism.
By JONATHAN ALLEN and JAKE SHERMAN
Already down, Congress got kicked by President Barack Obama in the last State of the Union of his first term Tuesday night.
Republicans, wracked with worry about a soft agenda and dim prospects for escaping the “do nothing” label, sat fuming. Democrats clearly loved it.
Obama goes after Congress
The takeaway: Congress can’t — or won’t — do anything about its sorry state, even if the gridlock plays directly into the president’s political strategy.
“As long as I’m president, I will work with anyone in this chamber … But I intend to fight obstruction with action, and I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place,” Obama said early in the speech.
In concluding, he equated partisanship to a lack of patriotism, telling lawmakers that “those of us who have been sent here to serve can learn from the service of our troops.”
In between, Obama all but called the institution corrupt, saying the “deficit of trust” between Washington and the rest of the country is “at least as bad” as that between Main Street and Wall Street.
“Some of this has to do with the corrosive influence of money and politics. So together, let’s take some steps to fix that,” he said. “Send me a bill that bans insider trading by members of Congress, and I will sign it tomorrow. Let’s limited any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact. Let’s make sure people who bundle campaign contributions for Congress can’t lobby Congress.”
Never mind that it’s already illegal for members of Congress to engage in insider trading or that influence-industry insiders bundled money for Obama’s election. It was a powerful, and largely expected, condemnation of an institution that is suffering through its worst approval ratings since polling companies started measuring public attitudes toward Congress.
His remarks landed like salt in Republicans’ open wounds, following as they did on the president’s controversial decision to make “recess” appointments of a new chairman of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three members of the National Labor Relations Board when Congress had not agreed to an adjournment resolution.
Republicans know that there’s not much chance of moving an agenda now — particularly when the president sees no down side in attacking an institution that had a 9 percent approval rating in one recent poll.
“These speeches are all usually lots of rhetoric, long on promises, very short on follow through, and so we’ll if he follows through. Republicans, for our part, are prepared to work with him on tax reform, regulatory reform, reducing spending, energy security,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said.
But will those items get done?
“I think it’s going to be hard,” he said.
The tough new tack by Obama — telling Congress he would act “with or without” it — thrilled Democrats, as did the president’s economic message on taxes and benefits for the middle class.
“Newt, Romney were on the spot,” Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) said. “Because he came down for the middle class. Boom.”
He later added, “This is the beginning of the campaign, he just told you what he’s going to do for the next nine months. He’s going to pound the living daylights out of them.”
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Mitt Romney -- The Great White Knight -- America's Class Warfare Champion of the Super-Rich
From The Washington Post -- January 17, 2012
By Ruth Marcus
Mitt Romney’s miserly concern for the poor
“I’m concerned about the poor in this country,” Mitt Romney said the other day. “We have to make sure the safety net is strong and able to help those who can’t help themselves.”
I perked up at those words, because they were something of a departure from his usual stump speech and because they happened to come on a day when I had written about the dire implications of Romney’s proposals for the social safety net.
I don’t question his sincerity. The problem: This fine sentiment doesn’t square with his actual policies.
Consider Romney’s support for the budget plan crafted by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan and passed by the Republican House. It would cut Medicaid spending by $700 billion over 10 years, reduce food stamps by $127 billion and cut in half the funding of Pell Grants for low-income college students.
As Fox News’s Chris Wallace usefully pointed out in an interview with Romney last month, “You would cut all of these programs, Governor, that people depend on, and a lot more than that.”
Romney, in response, focused on his proposal for Medicaid. He would turn the program over to the states and allow funding to grow at inflation plus 1 percentage point — significantly less than the historical growth of health-care costs.
“By doing that, you save an enormous amount of money,” Romney said. “I happen to believe that states can do a better job caring for their own poor, rooting out the fraud and waste and abuse that exists within those programs.”
Wallace: “But you don’t think, if you cut $700 billion in aid to the states, that some people are going to get hurt?”
Romney: “By cutting welfare spending dramatically, I don’t think we hurt the poor. In the same way, I think cutting Medicaid spending by having it go to the states, run more efficiently with less fraud, I don’t think will hurt the people that depend on that program for their health care.”
Really? Reforming welfare to encourage work was a good idea, but for those who need temporary help, benefits are increasingly inadequate. Adjusting for inflation, benefits are now below the 1996 level in all but two states. And turning the program into a block grant has meant that states, reeling from the impact of the recession, have been unable to respond adequately to increased needs.
That history is hardly reassuring about Romney’s plan to cut hundreds of billions from Medicaid. But the welfare analogy isn’t the only cause for concern. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), analyzing the Ryan cuts, found that states “would face significant challenges in achieving sufficient cost savings through efficiencies to mitigate the loss of federal funding.”
So much for Romney’s mythical world in which huge cuts can be accomplished with zero harm to the poor and disabled.
Instead, according to the CBO, states would face a menu of unappetizing choices. If they did not want to raise taxes or reduce other spending, they would have to choose among cutting already low provider payments; reducing the benefits that the program covers; or throwing people now eligible for help off the program.
The impact of Romney’s approach on the safety net would go far beyond Medicaid. The brutal arithmetic of his stated plan to cap spending at 20 percent of gross domestic product — while, unlike Ryan, increasing defense funding — is that safety-net programs would have to be chopped significantly beyond where even Ryan would take them.
Romney’s tax plan would exacerbate the unfairness. He would continue the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and provide extra breaks that would primarily help the rich. According to a new analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, taxpayers with incomes of $1 million or more would see an average tax cut of $287,000 compared to letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire.
At the same time, Romney would do away with recent increases in the child tax credit and the earned-income tax credit — provisions that help low-income families. As a consequence, between 16 and 20 percent of those with incomes of $50,000 or less would actually see their taxes rise under a President Romney.
In other words, Romney would spend hundreds of billions for a tax cut whose benefits flow overwhelmingly to the wealthiest Americans, even as he would cut even more from programs that help the most vulnerable.
Those skewed priorities are hard to square with Romney’s stated concern, however heartfelt, for the poor. The man from Bain Capital needs to take another look at his figures.
By Ruth Marcus
Mitt Romney’s miserly concern for the poor
“I’m concerned about the poor in this country,” Mitt Romney said the other day. “We have to make sure the safety net is strong and able to help those who can’t help themselves.”
I perked up at those words, because they were something of a departure from his usual stump speech and because they happened to come on a day when I had written about the dire implications of Romney’s proposals for the social safety net.
I don’t question his sincerity. The problem: This fine sentiment doesn’t square with his actual policies.
Consider Romney’s support for the budget plan crafted by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan and passed by the Republican House. It would cut Medicaid spending by $700 billion over 10 years, reduce food stamps by $127 billion and cut in half the funding of Pell Grants for low-income college students.
As Fox News’s Chris Wallace usefully pointed out in an interview with Romney last month, “You would cut all of these programs, Governor, that people depend on, and a lot more than that.”
Romney, in response, focused on his proposal for Medicaid. He would turn the program over to the states and allow funding to grow at inflation plus 1 percentage point — significantly less than the historical growth of health-care costs.
“By doing that, you save an enormous amount of money,” Romney said. “I happen to believe that states can do a better job caring for their own poor, rooting out the fraud and waste and abuse that exists within those programs.”
Wallace: “But you don’t think, if you cut $700 billion in aid to the states, that some people are going to get hurt?”
Romney: “By cutting welfare spending dramatically, I don’t think we hurt the poor. In the same way, I think cutting Medicaid spending by having it go to the states, run more efficiently with less fraud, I don’t think will hurt the people that depend on that program for their health care.”
Really? Reforming welfare to encourage work was a good idea, but for those who need temporary help, benefits are increasingly inadequate. Adjusting for inflation, benefits are now below the 1996 level in all but two states. And turning the program into a block grant has meant that states, reeling from the impact of the recession, have been unable to respond adequately to increased needs.
That history is hardly reassuring about Romney’s plan to cut hundreds of billions from Medicaid. But the welfare analogy isn’t the only cause for concern. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), analyzing the Ryan cuts, found that states “would face significant challenges in achieving sufficient cost savings through efficiencies to mitigate the loss of federal funding.”
So much for Romney’s mythical world in which huge cuts can be accomplished with zero harm to the poor and disabled.
Instead, according to the CBO, states would face a menu of unappetizing choices. If they did not want to raise taxes or reduce other spending, they would have to choose among cutting already low provider payments; reducing the benefits that the program covers; or throwing people now eligible for help off the program.
The impact of Romney’s approach on the safety net would go far beyond Medicaid. The brutal arithmetic of his stated plan to cap spending at 20 percent of gross domestic product — while, unlike Ryan, increasing defense funding — is that safety-net programs would have to be chopped significantly beyond where even Ryan would take them.
Romney’s tax plan would exacerbate the unfairness. He would continue the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and provide extra breaks that would primarily help the rich. According to a new analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, taxpayers with incomes of $1 million or more would see an average tax cut of $287,000 compared to letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire.
At the same time, Romney would do away with recent increases in the child tax credit and the earned-income tax credit — provisions that help low-income families. As a consequence, between 16 and 20 percent of those with incomes of $50,000 or less would actually see their taxes rise under a President Romney.
In other words, Romney would spend hundreds of billions for a tax cut whose benefits flow overwhelmingly to the wealthiest Americans, even as he would cut even more from programs that help the most vulnerable.
Those skewed priorities are hard to square with Romney’s stated concern, however heartfelt, for the poor. The man from Bain Capital needs to take another look at his figures.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Mitt Romney Wages Class Warfare as a Champion of the Upper Class
From The Progress Report -- January 17, 2012:
Mitt Romney Probably Pays A Lower Tax Rate Than You Do
Mitt Romney, Tax Loophole Exploiter-in-Chief
Way back in October, we called on Mitt Romney to release his tax returns and introduced you to the Romney Rule — the unfair tax loopholes that Romney both supports and which he personally exploits in order to pay a lower tax rate than millions of middle class Americans.
This is of course the opposite of the Buffett Rule proposed by President Obama: the simple idea that no millionaires should be able to cheat the system in order to pay a lower tax rate than middle class Americans. Romney quickly came out in opposition to the Buffett Rule, dismissing it with his now familiar charge of “class warfare.”
Today, after weeks of pressure from both progressives and his Republican opponents, Romney finally agreed to release just one year’s tax return in April if he is the Republican nominee. He also admitted what we’ve known all along: that he pays a tax rate of around 15 percent — a rate far lower than millions of middle class Americans pay on the wages they earn.
Q: What’s the effective rate you’ve been paying?
ROMNEY: What’s the effective rate I’ve been paying? It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything, because my last 10 years, I’ve, my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past, rather than ordinary income, rather than earned annual income.
How the Romney Rule Works
ThinkProgress Economy Editor Pat Garafalo explains in the Atlantic today why Romney pays such a low rate — and why there’s no economic justification for it:
Managers of private equity firms like Romney are often paid under an arrangement in which they receive both a set fee for their management, as well as a share of the profits that the firm makes for investors. While their management fees are taxed at normal income tax rates, the share of investor gains that go to a private equity manager (called “carried interest”) are treated as capital gains, and thus taxed at a top rate of 15 percent. (Hedge fund managers and partners in real estate ventures also benefit from receiving carried interest.)
The argument for a lower capital gains rate is that it encourages investment. Whether that’s true or not, private equity managers are allowed to pay the capital gains rate on the profits they make managing someone else’s money, not for any risk that they take themselves. Treating carried interest as capital gains is an unjustifiable tax break that needs to be eliminated. [...]
Thanks to a lucrative retirement package, Romney is still making millions from Bain, much of which is likely being taxed as carried interest. (While Romney has refused to make his tax returns public, he’s said that all of his income is taxed at investment rates.) Analysts have estimated that Romney’s tax rate is about 14 percent, lower than that of many middle class families.
Leaving aside the questions over whether Romney and Bain’s modus operandi adds value to the economy, there’s certainly no value added by letting private equity managers treat the paycheck they receive from investors as capital gains: that particular tax loophole just lets very wealthy money managers avoid paying the top tax rate, for no real reason.
In other words, since Romney makes almost of all of his money with money (his quarter billion dollar fortune, to be precise) and enjoys a tax loophole only available to partners in businesses like Bain Capital, he is allowed to pay a much, much lower tax rate than someone making a fraction of his income who is simply paid a wage for the work they do (e.g. teachers, firefighters, and cops). For example, a single filer making $60,000 in wages who didn’t itemize their deductions faced an effective tax rate of 29.5 percent in 2011 — double that of Mitt Romney, who makes millions of dollars a year.
By contrast, when Romney’s father, who was a wealthy corporate CEO, ran for president in 1968 he released 12 years of his tax returns. One contemporaneous press report uncovered today by Lee Fang noted that the elder Romney ”seldom took advantage of tax loopholes to escape his tax obligations.”
Adding Insult to Injury
Romney has already proposed an economic plan that is of, by, and for the wealthiest 1 Percent of Americans, including trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations paired with tax increases on middle class families and deep cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs and services Americans depend on each day. Last night during the GOP presidential debate, Romney went a step further and called for taxes on the wealthiest Americans to be cut by another ONE-THIRD or more.
Romney then dug the hole deeper this morning during the press conference at which he confirmed his shockingly low tax rate. He stated that almost all of his income is from investments; however, he noted that he has also received fees for giving speeches, adding “but not very much” with a laugh. According to his most recent financial disclosure form, “not very much” turns out to have been more than $370,000 for just the period between February 2010 and February 2011.
IN ONE SENTENCE: Millionaire Mitt Romney uses unfair tax loopholes not available to ordinary Americans to pay a lower tax rate than millions of middle class workers — many of whom will see a tax increase under the Romney plan even as he slashes taxes for the wealthiest Americans and corporations.
Mitt Romney Probably Pays A Lower Tax Rate Than You Do
Mitt Romney, Tax Loophole Exploiter-in-Chief
Way back in October, we called on Mitt Romney to release his tax returns and introduced you to the Romney Rule — the unfair tax loopholes that Romney both supports and which he personally exploits in order to pay a lower tax rate than millions of middle class Americans.
This is of course the opposite of the Buffett Rule proposed by President Obama: the simple idea that no millionaires should be able to cheat the system in order to pay a lower tax rate than middle class Americans. Romney quickly came out in opposition to the Buffett Rule, dismissing it with his now familiar charge of “class warfare.”
Today, after weeks of pressure from both progressives and his Republican opponents, Romney finally agreed to release just one year’s tax return in April if he is the Republican nominee. He also admitted what we’ve known all along: that he pays a tax rate of around 15 percent — a rate far lower than millions of middle class Americans pay on the wages they earn.
Q: What’s the effective rate you’ve been paying?
ROMNEY: What’s the effective rate I’ve been paying? It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything, because my last 10 years, I’ve, my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past, rather than ordinary income, rather than earned annual income.
How the Romney Rule Works
ThinkProgress Economy Editor Pat Garafalo explains in the Atlantic today why Romney pays such a low rate — and why there’s no economic justification for it:
Managers of private equity firms like Romney are often paid under an arrangement in which they receive both a set fee for their management, as well as a share of the profits that the firm makes for investors. While their management fees are taxed at normal income tax rates, the share of investor gains that go to a private equity manager (called “carried interest”) are treated as capital gains, and thus taxed at a top rate of 15 percent. (Hedge fund managers and partners in real estate ventures also benefit from receiving carried interest.)
The argument for a lower capital gains rate is that it encourages investment. Whether that’s true or not, private equity managers are allowed to pay the capital gains rate on the profits they make managing someone else’s money, not for any risk that they take themselves. Treating carried interest as capital gains is an unjustifiable tax break that needs to be eliminated. [...]
Thanks to a lucrative retirement package, Romney is still making millions from Bain, much of which is likely being taxed as carried interest. (While Romney has refused to make his tax returns public, he’s said that all of his income is taxed at investment rates.) Analysts have estimated that Romney’s tax rate is about 14 percent, lower than that of many middle class families.
Leaving aside the questions over whether Romney and Bain’s modus operandi adds value to the economy, there’s certainly no value added by letting private equity managers treat the paycheck they receive from investors as capital gains: that particular tax loophole just lets very wealthy money managers avoid paying the top tax rate, for no real reason.
In other words, since Romney makes almost of all of his money with money (his quarter billion dollar fortune, to be precise) and enjoys a tax loophole only available to partners in businesses like Bain Capital, he is allowed to pay a much, much lower tax rate than someone making a fraction of his income who is simply paid a wage for the work they do (e.g. teachers, firefighters, and cops). For example, a single filer making $60,000 in wages who didn’t itemize their deductions faced an effective tax rate of 29.5 percent in 2011 — double that of Mitt Romney, who makes millions of dollars a year.
By contrast, when Romney’s father, who was a wealthy corporate CEO, ran for president in 1968 he released 12 years of his tax returns. One contemporaneous press report uncovered today by Lee Fang noted that the elder Romney ”seldom took advantage of tax loopholes to escape his tax obligations.”
Adding Insult to Injury
Romney has already proposed an economic plan that is of, by, and for the wealthiest 1 Percent of Americans, including trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations paired with tax increases on middle class families and deep cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs and services Americans depend on each day. Last night during the GOP presidential debate, Romney went a step further and called for taxes on the wealthiest Americans to be cut by another ONE-THIRD or more.
Romney then dug the hole deeper this morning during the press conference at which he confirmed his shockingly low tax rate. He stated that almost all of his income is from investments; however, he noted that he has also received fees for giving speeches, adding “but not very much” with a laugh. According to his most recent financial disclosure form, “not very much” turns out to have been more than $370,000 for just the period between February 2010 and February 2011.
IN ONE SENTENCE: Millionaire Mitt Romney uses unfair tax loopholes not available to ordinary Americans to pay a lower tax rate than millions of middle class workers — many of whom will see a tax increase under the Romney plan even as he slashes taxes for the wealthiest Americans and corporations.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Mitt Romney -- the Republicans' Great White Hope -- Is Doomed
From The Daily Beast -- January 13, 2012
Yes, Romney Could Lose
I just watched the Bain documentary featured below and being broadcast throughout South Carolina by Newt Gingrich's SuperPac in full. It's loaded with out-of-context quotes and heavily biased; it focuses on the specific human suffering of the necessary "creative destruction" of capitalism not its general benefits to the economy. It does so through the voices and stories of ordinary Americans. And, as an emotional bludgeon, it's devastating.
But what makes it so dangerous to Romney, it seems to me, is that the Bain Brahmin didn't just fire thousands of working class people in restructuring and in closing companies. He made a fucking unimaginable fortune doing it. That's the issue. Other Republicans can speak about the need for free markets in a sluggish economy. But with Romney, we have a singular example of someone who made a quarter of a billion dollars by firing the white middle and working class in droves in ways that do not seem designed to promote growth or efficiency, but merely to enrich Bain.
Here's the New York Post, for Pete's sake, making the case last year against the shifty Wall Street games of Bain:
Romney's private equity firm, Bain Capital, bought companies and often increased short-term earnings so those businesses could then borrow enormous amounts of money. That borrowed money was used to pay Bain dividends. Then those businesses needed to maintain that high level of earnings to pay their debts...
* Bain in 1988 put $5 million down to buy Stage Stores, and in the mid-'90s took it public, collecting $100 million from stock offerings. Stage filed for bankruptcy in 2000.
* Bain in 1992 bought American Pad & Paper (AMPAD), investing $5 million, and collected $100 million from dividends. The business filed for bankruptcy in 2000.
* Bain in 1993 invested $60 million when buying GS Industries, and received $65 million from dividends. GS filed for bankruptcy in 2001.
* Bain in 1997 invested $46 million when buying Details, and made $93 million from stock offerings. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2003.
Romney's Bain invested 22 percent of the money it raised from 1987-95 in these five businesses, making a $578 million profit.
Some of the associations in the ad are unfair - but they will resonate emotionally. Many, many people in, say, South Carolina, have lost jobs. That's rough enough. But if Romney comes across as the man who made a fortune off this kind of Wall Street maneuvering, he becomes a symbol and a focus for all the roiling populist discontent out there. When he is responsible for someone losing her house, the contrast with his multiple mansions and private beach gets a little de trop. One ad with one victim could be poison.
Of all the jobs he liquidated, moreover, many are in the American heartland. And his response to the people in this documentary - white working class heartland Americans, the GOP base - is that they are merely envious of his achievements. They don't come off that way in the ad. They come off as bewildered, betrayed and sure that Romney's goal in all this was merely, solely to make money for himself - the kind of money that most Americans cannot even compute.
I simply cannot imagine a worse narrative for a candidate in this climate; or a politician whose skills are singularly incapable of responding to the story in any persuasive way. This ad is powerful. Romney has already seen a drop in South Carolina. I suspect he'll drop some more. And I suspect once the potency of this line of attack is absorbed by the GOP establishment, there will be some full, if concealed, panic.
Yes, Romney Could Lose
I just watched the Bain documentary featured below and being broadcast throughout South Carolina by Newt Gingrich's SuperPac in full. It's loaded with out-of-context quotes and heavily biased; it focuses on the specific human suffering of the necessary "creative destruction" of capitalism not its general benefits to the economy. It does so through the voices and stories of ordinary Americans. And, as an emotional bludgeon, it's devastating.
But what makes it so dangerous to Romney, it seems to me, is that the Bain Brahmin didn't just fire thousands of working class people in restructuring and in closing companies. He made a fucking unimaginable fortune doing it. That's the issue. Other Republicans can speak about the need for free markets in a sluggish economy. But with Romney, we have a singular example of someone who made a quarter of a billion dollars by firing the white middle and working class in droves in ways that do not seem designed to promote growth or efficiency, but merely to enrich Bain.
Here's the New York Post, for Pete's sake, making the case last year against the shifty Wall Street games of Bain:
Romney's private equity firm, Bain Capital, bought companies and often increased short-term earnings so those businesses could then borrow enormous amounts of money. That borrowed money was used to pay Bain dividends. Then those businesses needed to maintain that high level of earnings to pay their debts...
* Bain in 1988 put $5 million down to buy Stage Stores, and in the mid-'90s took it public, collecting $100 million from stock offerings. Stage filed for bankruptcy in 2000.
* Bain in 1992 bought American Pad & Paper (AMPAD), investing $5 million, and collected $100 million from dividends. The business filed for bankruptcy in 2000.
* Bain in 1993 invested $60 million when buying GS Industries, and received $65 million from dividends. GS filed for bankruptcy in 2001.
* Bain in 1997 invested $46 million when buying Details, and made $93 million from stock offerings. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2003.
Romney's Bain invested 22 percent of the money it raised from 1987-95 in these five businesses, making a $578 million profit.
Some of the associations in the ad are unfair - but they will resonate emotionally. Many, many people in, say, South Carolina, have lost jobs. That's rough enough. But if Romney comes across as the man who made a fortune off this kind of Wall Street maneuvering, he becomes a symbol and a focus for all the roiling populist discontent out there. When he is responsible for someone losing her house, the contrast with his multiple mansions and private beach gets a little de trop. One ad with one victim could be poison.
Of all the jobs he liquidated, moreover, many are in the American heartland. And his response to the people in this documentary - white working class heartland Americans, the GOP base - is that they are merely envious of his achievements. They don't come off that way in the ad. They come off as bewildered, betrayed and sure that Romney's goal in all this was merely, solely to make money for himself - the kind of money that most Americans cannot even compute.
I simply cannot imagine a worse narrative for a candidate in this climate; or a politician whose skills are singularly incapable of responding to the story in any persuasive way. This ad is powerful. Romney has already seen a drop in South Carolina. I suspect he'll drop some more. And I suspect once the potency of this line of attack is absorbed by the GOP establishment, there will be some full, if concealed, panic.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Mitt Romney, The Great Destroyer of American Jobs
From The Daily Beast -- January 6, 2012:
New Anti-Romney Video Attacks Bain Capital Work
By Peter J. Boyer
An ex-Romney adviser is unleashing a half-hour attack video blasting Mitt’s work at Bain Capital. A pro-Gingrich super PAC just scooped it up.
The effort to derail Mitt Romney’s presidential quest heightened dramatically on Friday when a super PAC associated with Newt Gingrich outbid all comers for the rights to a scathing 30-minute attack video depicting Romney as a greedy, job-killing corporate raider “more ruthless than Wall Street.”
In a season filled with negative ads and rhetorical crossfire, the striking feature of the film, aside from its mini-documentary length, is its authorship. The film was made by Jason Killian Meath, a former associate of Romney’s top strategists, Stuart Stevens and Russ Schriefer. Meath had worked for the Romney campaign in 2008, creating much of the ad content for that failed effort. He left Stevens and Schriefer’s firm, SSG, in 2010. Meath declined to comment on his project, referring inquiries to the pro-Gingrich PAC Winning Our Future.
“We’re going to release a short, 27-minute film that is well-documented, and tells the real story of Mitt Romney at Bain Capital—and it’s not a pretty story,” says Rick Tyler, an adviser to the Gingrich-supporting PAC.
The video, called When Mitt Romney Came to Town, is a slick production focusing on Romney’s tenure as CEO of Bain Capital, a private investment firm.
The movie begins with a cinematic tableau of Americana, as the narrator intones, “Capitalism made America great. Free markets. Innovation. Hard work. The building blocks of the American dream. But in the wrong hands, some of those dreams can turn into nightmares.”
A shot of an American flag, waving in the breeze is replaced by gathering storm clouds, as the narrator continues: “Wall Street’s corporate raiders made billions of dollars. Their greed was matched only by their willingness to do anything to make millions in profits … nothing spared. Nothing mattered but profits. This film is about one such raider and his firm.”
At that point, a black-and-white photograph of Romney appears on the screen, as the narrator alleges that “Romney took foreign seed money from Latin America” to exploit “dozens of American businesses” and the “thousands of employees that worked there.”
“A story of greed,” the narrator intones. “Playing the system for a quick buck. A group of corporate raiders, led by Mitt Romney. More ruthless than Wall Street. For tens of thousands of Americans, the suffering began when Mitt Romney came to town.”
According to four sources familiar with the project, the film was commissioned by Barry Bennett, a conservative activist who was once chief of staff for Ohio Republican Congresswoman Jean Schmidt. Bennett is now at the Alliance for America’s Future, a Virginia-based group whose principals include Mary Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
When Mitt Romney Came to Town focuses on four case studies of Bain’s acquisitions—a Florida-based company called UniMac, which produced commercial laundry equipment; KayBee Toys; the electronics company DDI; and AmPad, an Indiana-based office-supply producer. The key result of these transactions, the film asserts, was “spectacular returns” for Bain through “stripping American businesses of assets, selling everything to the highest bidder, and often killing jobs for big financial rewards.”
New Anti-Romney Video Attacks Bain Capital Work
By Peter J. Boyer
An ex-Romney adviser is unleashing a half-hour attack video blasting Mitt’s work at Bain Capital. A pro-Gingrich super PAC just scooped it up.
The effort to derail Mitt Romney’s presidential quest heightened dramatically on Friday when a super PAC associated with Newt Gingrich outbid all comers for the rights to a scathing 30-minute attack video depicting Romney as a greedy, job-killing corporate raider “more ruthless than Wall Street.”
In a season filled with negative ads and rhetorical crossfire, the striking feature of the film, aside from its mini-documentary length, is its authorship. The film was made by Jason Killian Meath, a former associate of Romney’s top strategists, Stuart Stevens and Russ Schriefer. Meath had worked for the Romney campaign in 2008, creating much of the ad content for that failed effort. He left Stevens and Schriefer’s firm, SSG, in 2010. Meath declined to comment on his project, referring inquiries to the pro-Gingrich PAC Winning Our Future.
“We’re going to release a short, 27-minute film that is well-documented, and tells the real story of Mitt Romney at Bain Capital—and it’s not a pretty story,” says Rick Tyler, an adviser to the Gingrich-supporting PAC.
The video, called When Mitt Romney Came to Town, is a slick production focusing on Romney’s tenure as CEO of Bain Capital, a private investment firm.
The movie begins with a cinematic tableau of Americana, as the narrator intones, “Capitalism made America great. Free markets. Innovation. Hard work. The building blocks of the American dream. But in the wrong hands, some of those dreams can turn into nightmares.”
A shot of an American flag, waving in the breeze is replaced by gathering storm clouds, as the narrator continues: “Wall Street’s corporate raiders made billions of dollars. Their greed was matched only by their willingness to do anything to make millions in profits … nothing spared. Nothing mattered but profits. This film is about one such raider and his firm.”
At that point, a black-and-white photograph of Romney appears on the screen, as the narrator alleges that “Romney took foreign seed money from Latin America” to exploit “dozens of American businesses” and the “thousands of employees that worked there.”
“A story of greed,” the narrator intones. “Playing the system for a quick buck. A group of corporate raiders, led by Mitt Romney. More ruthless than Wall Street. For tens of thousands of Americans, the suffering began when Mitt Romney came to town.”
According to four sources familiar with the project, the film was commissioned by Barry Bennett, a conservative activist who was once chief of staff for Ohio Republican Congresswoman Jean Schmidt. Bennett is now at the Alliance for America’s Future, a Virginia-based group whose principals include Mary Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
When Mitt Romney Came to Town focuses on four case studies of Bain’s acquisitions—a Florida-based company called UniMac, which produced commercial laundry equipment; KayBee Toys; the electronics company DDI; and AmPad, an Indiana-based office-supply producer. The key result of these transactions, the film asserts, was “spectacular returns” for Bain through “stripping American businesses of assets, selling everything to the highest bidder, and often killing jobs for big financial rewards.”
The Tea Party, Rick Santorum and the Push for American Sexual Slavery
From The Daily Beast -- January 6, 2012:
Rick Santorum’s Idea of Freedom: Enforcing Catholic Sexual Morality
By Michelle Goldberg
The former senator’s Iowa boost has thrown into high relief his hunger for more government control of Americans’ lives—on sex, divorce abortion, birth control—and the real force behind the Tea Party: the religious right.
Speaking to NPR in 2005, Rick Santorum criticized fellow Republicans who were disinclined to meddle in Americans’ private lives. “They took a more Goldwaterish libertarian point of view when it comes to the interaction of government in people’s lives, and I think to the detriment of the country,” he said. Santorum, by contrast, has always been resolutely anti-individualist, denouncing, in another interview, “this whole idea of personal autonomy.”
It’s long been clear that a large part of the Tea Party was simply the religious right rebranded. For all the movement’s talk of liberty, many in it hungered for more government control of the private lives of Americans—especially American women. Santorum’s rise, though, has thrown the movement’s strain of social authoritarianism into especially high relief. According to a CNN entrance poll, he won a plurality of Iowa caucus-goers who described themselves as strong supporters of the Tea Party movement, 30 percent, compared to 17 percent for Newt Gingrich and 16 percent for Ron Paul. This is revealing, and not just because Santorum is extremely socially conservative—after all, Paul is too. What makes Santorum unique is his desire to use government power to enforce his version of Catholic sexual morality.
This goes far beyond abortion. “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country,” he said last year in a video interview with the conservative blog Caffeinated Thoughts. “Many in the Christian faith have said, ‘Well, that’s OK, contraception is OK.’ It’s not OK. It’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” Included in this is birth control used by married couples. Sex, he said, is “supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal and unitive, but also procreative.” Most presidents don’t talk about such things, he said, but “these are important public policy issues. They have profound impact on the health of our society.”
Santorum objects to the notion that “you have the right to consensual sex within your home.”
Santorum also wants the government to make it more difficult for people to get divorced. “Divorce is simply far too easy to get in this country,” he wrote in his 2005 book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good. “States should put in braking mechanisms for couples who have children under the age of 18. This means a mandatory waiting period and mandatory counseling before a divorce is granted.”
He has argued that the government should be able to prohibit both gay sex and adultery. In 2003, when the Supreme Court struck down Texas’s anti-sodomy law in Lawrence v. Texas, he told the Associated Press that such laws are “there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does.”
This says it all: Santorum objects to the notion that “you have the right to consensual sex within your home.” By elevating a person so hostile to individual rights, Iowa voters have actually done us all a weird sort of favor. They’ve exposed, in the starkest possible way, what a large part of the conservative movement means by freedom. It’s not the freedom to live as one chooses. It’s the freedom to impose one’s morality on others.
Rick Santorum’s Idea of Freedom: Enforcing Catholic Sexual Morality
By Michelle Goldberg
The former senator’s Iowa boost has thrown into high relief his hunger for more government control of Americans’ lives—on sex, divorce abortion, birth control—and the real force behind the Tea Party: the religious right.
Speaking to NPR in 2005, Rick Santorum criticized fellow Republicans who were disinclined to meddle in Americans’ private lives. “They took a more Goldwaterish libertarian point of view when it comes to the interaction of government in people’s lives, and I think to the detriment of the country,” he said. Santorum, by contrast, has always been resolutely anti-individualist, denouncing, in another interview, “this whole idea of personal autonomy.”
It’s long been clear that a large part of the Tea Party was simply the religious right rebranded. For all the movement’s talk of liberty, many in it hungered for more government control of the private lives of Americans—especially American women. Santorum’s rise, though, has thrown the movement’s strain of social authoritarianism into especially high relief. According to a CNN entrance poll, he won a plurality of Iowa caucus-goers who described themselves as strong supporters of the Tea Party movement, 30 percent, compared to 17 percent for Newt Gingrich and 16 percent for Ron Paul. This is revealing, and not just because Santorum is extremely socially conservative—after all, Paul is too. What makes Santorum unique is his desire to use government power to enforce his version of Catholic sexual morality.
This goes far beyond abortion. “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country,” he said last year in a video interview with the conservative blog Caffeinated Thoughts. “Many in the Christian faith have said, ‘Well, that’s OK, contraception is OK.’ It’s not OK. It’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” Included in this is birth control used by married couples. Sex, he said, is “supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal and unitive, but also procreative.” Most presidents don’t talk about such things, he said, but “these are important public policy issues. They have profound impact on the health of our society.”
Santorum objects to the notion that “you have the right to consensual sex within your home.”
Santorum also wants the government to make it more difficult for people to get divorced. “Divorce is simply far too easy to get in this country,” he wrote in his 2005 book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good. “States should put in braking mechanisms for couples who have children under the age of 18. This means a mandatory waiting period and mandatory counseling before a divorce is granted.”
He has argued that the government should be able to prohibit both gay sex and adultery. In 2003, when the Supreme Court struck down Texas’s anti-sodomy law in Lawrence v. Texas, he told the Associated Press that such laws are “there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does.”
This says it all: Santorum objects to the notion that “you have the right to consensual sex within your home.” By elevating a person so hostile to individual rights, Iowa voters have actually done us all a weird sort of favor. They’ve exposed, in the starkest possible way, what a large part of the conservative movement means by freedom. It’s not the freedom to live as one chooses. It’s the freedom to impose one’s morality on others.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
The Monster Disaster Called Rick Santorum
From The Progress report -- January 5, 2012:
Rick Santorum’s Most Outrageous Campaign Moments
Rising GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum is presenting himself to national audiences as a common sense conservative senator from a Democratic state with both economic and national security acumen. A late surge in Iowa led the former Pennsylvania senator to a near-win in that state’s caucuses and gave his campaign momentum ahead of next Tuesday’s New Hampshire GOP primary.
But on the road to his second-place finish, Santorum laid out some extreme positions on health, economic, and social policies. His conservative stances may have won him endorsements from anti-gay Iowa leader Bob Vander Plaats and other groups, but here are 12 outrageous claims that Santorum has made on the campaign trail that you should know about:
1) ANNUL ALL SAME-SEX MARRIAGES: Arguing that gay relationships “destabilize” society, Santorum wouldn’t offer any legal protections to gay relationships and has pledged to annul all same-sex marriages if elected president. During his 99-country tour of Iowa, Santorum frequently compared same-sex relationships to inanimate objects like trees, basketballs, beer, and paper towels and even tried to blame the economic crisis on gay people. As Santorum explained back in August, religious people have a constitutional right to discriminate against gays: “We have a right the Constitution of religious liberty but now the courts have created a super-right that’s above a right that’s actually in the Constitution, and that’s of sexual liberty. And I think that’s a wrong, that’s a destructive element.”
2) ‘I’M FOR INCOME INEQUALITY’: “They talk about income inequality. I’m for income inequality,” Santorum said during an event in Pella, Iowa in December. “I think some people should make more than other people, because some people work harder and have better ideas and take more risk, and they should be rewarded for it. I have no problem with income inequality.”
3) CONTRACEPTION IS ‘A LICENSE TO DO THINGS’: Santorum has pledged to repeal all federal funding for contraception and allow the states to outlaw birth control, insisting that “it’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
4) GAY SOLDIERS ‘CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR PEOPLE LIVING IN CLOSE QUARTERS’: During an appearance on Fox News Sunday in October, Santorum defended his support for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by arguing that gay soldiers would disrupt the military because “they’re in close quarters, they live with people, they obviously shower with people.” He also suggested that “there are people who were gay and lived the gay lifestyle and aren’t anymore.”
5) OBAMA SHOULD OPPOSE ABORTION BECAUSE HE’S BLACK: During an appearance on Christian television in January, Santorum said he was surprised that President Obama didn’t know when life began — given his skin color. “I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people,” he explained.
6) WE DON’T NEED FOOD STAMPS BECAUSE OBESITY RATES ARE SO HIGH: Speaking in Le Mars, Iowa in December, Santorum promised to significantly reduce federal funding for food stamps, arguing that the nation’s increasing obesity rates render the program unnecessary.
7) ABORTION EXCEPTIONS TO PROTECT WOMEN’S HEALTH ARE ‘PHONY’: While discussing his track record as a champion of the partial birth abortion ban in June, Santorum dismissed exceptions other senators wanted to carve out to protect the life and health of mothers, calling such exceptions “phony.” “They wanted a health exception, which of course is a phony exception which would make the ban ineffective,” he said.
8) HEALTH REFORM WILL KILL MY CHILD: Santorum, who claims that Obamacare motivated him to run for president, told reporters in April that his daughter Bella — who was born with a genetic abnormality — wouldn’t survive in a country with “socialized medicine.” “Children like Bella are not given the treatment that other children are given.”
9) UNINSURED AMERICANS SHOULD SPEND LESS ON CELL-PHONE BILLS: During a meeting with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register in August, Santorum said that people who can’t afford health care should stop whining about the high costs of medical treatments and medications and spend less on non essentials. Answering a question about the uninsured, Santorum explained that health care, like a car, is a luxury resource that is rationed by society and recalled the story of a woman who said she was spending $200 a month on life-saving prescriptions. Santorum told her to stop complaining and instead lower her cable and cell phone bills.
10) INSURERS SHOULD DISCRIMINATE AGAINST PEOPLE WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS: Santorum sounded like a representative from the health insurance industry when he addressed a small group of high school students in Merrimack, New Hampshire in December. The former Pennsylvania senator not only defended insurers for denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, he also argued that individuals who are sick should pay higher premiums because they cost more money to insure. And just this morning, he mocked President Obama for extending health care to “everyone.”
11) HIS FAVORITE JUSTICE THINKS CHILD LABOR LAWS ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL: At a recent GOP debate, Santorum identified Justice Clarence Thomas as his favorite current member of the Supreme Court, even though Thomas believes that pretty much everything violates the Constitution. Thomas has repeatedly advocated a twisted reading of the Constitution that would invalidate a long list of essential laws, including the federal ban on workplace discrimination, similar laws protecting older Americans and Americans with disabilities, the national minimum wage, national child labor laws, and the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters.
12) MUSLIMS SHOULD BE PROFILED: During the CNN national security debate in November, Santorum endorsed the idea of profiling Muslims to increase airport security. “Obviously, Muslims would be someone you’d look at,” he told the debate’s moderator Wolf Blitzer. But his proposed profiling for the sake of national security follows a pattern of his holding anti-Muslim beliefs.
Rick Santorum’s Most Outrageous Campaign Moments
Rising GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum is presenting himself to national audiences as a common sense conservative senator from a Democratic state with both economic and national security acumen. A late surge in Iowa led the former Pennsylvania senator to a near-win in that state’s caucuses and gave his campaign momentum ahead of next Tuesday’s New Hampshire GOP primary.
But on the road to his second-place finish, Santorum laid out some extreme positions on health, economic, and social policies. His conservative stances may have won him endorsements from anti-gay Iowa leader Bob Vander Plaats and other groups, but here are 12 outrageous claims that Santorum has made on the campaign trail that you should know about:
1) ANNUL ALL SAME-SEX MARRIAGES: Arguing that gay relationships “destabilize” society, Santorum wouldn’t offer any legal protections to gay relationships and has pledged to annul all same-sex marriages if elected president. During his 99-country tour of Iowa, Santorum frequently compared same-sex relationships to inanimate objects like trees, basketballs, beer, and paper towels and even tried to blame the economic crisis on gay people. As Santorum explained back in August, religious people have a constitutional right to discriminate against gays: “We have a right the Constitution of religious liberty but now the courts have created a super-right that’s above a right that’s actually in the Constitution, and that’s of sexual liberty. And I think that’s a wrong, that’s a destructive element.”
2) ‘I’M FOR INCOME INEQUALITY’: “They talk about income inequality. I’m for income inequality,” Santorum said during an event in Pella, Iowa in December. “I think some people should make more than other people, because some people work harder and have better ideas and take more risk, and they should be rewarded for it. I have no problem with income inequality.”
3) CONTRACEPTION IS ‘A LICENSE TO DO THINGS’: Santorum has pledged to repeal all federal funding for contraception and allow the states to outlaw birth control, insisting that “it’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
4) GAY SOLDIERS ‘CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR PEOPLE LIVING IN CLOSE QUARTERS’: During an appearance on Fox News Sunday in October, Santorum defended his support for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by arguing that gay soldiers would disrupt the military because “they’re in close quarters, they live with people, they obviously shower with people.” He also suggested that “there are people who were gay and lived the gay lifestyle and aren’t anymore.”
5) OBAMA SHOULD OPPOSE ABORTION BECAUSE HE’S BLACK: During an appearance on Christian television in January, Santorum said he was surprised that President Obama didn’t know when life began — given his skin color. “I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people,” he explained.
6) WE DON’T NEED FOOD STAMPS BECAUSE OBESITY RATES ARE SO HIGH: Speaking in Le Mars, Iowa in December, Santorum promised to significantly reduce federal funding for food stamps, arguing that the nation’s increasing obesity rates render the program unnecessary.
7) ABORTION EXCEPTIONS TO PROTECT WOMEN’S HEALTH ARE ‘PHONY’: While discussing his track record as a champion of the partial birth abortion ban in June, Santorum dismissed exceptions other senators wanted to carve out to protect the life and health of mothers, calling such exceptions “phony.” “They wanted a health exception, which of course is a phony exception which would make the ban ineffective,” he said.
8) HEALTH REFORM WILL KILL MY CHILD: Santorum, who claims that Obamacare motivated him to run for president, told reporters in April that his daughter Bella — who was born with a genetic abnormality — wouldn’t survive in a country with “socialized medicine.” “Children like Bella are not given the treatment that other children are given.”
9) UNINSURED AMERICANS SHOULD SPEND LESS ON CELL-PHONE BILLS: During a meeting with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register in August, Santorum said that people who can’t afford health care should stop whining about the high costs of medical treatments and medications and spend less on non essentials. Answering a question about the uninsured, Santorum explained that health care, like a car, is a luxury resource that is rationed by society and recalled the story of a woman who said she was spending $200 a month on life-saving prescriptions. Santorum told her to stop complaining and instead lower her cable and cell phone bills.
10) INSURERS SHOULD DISCRIMINATE AGAINST PEOPLE WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS: Santorum sounded like a representative from the health insurance industry when he addressed a small group of high school students in Merrimack, New Hampshire in December. The former Pennsylvania senator not only defended insurers for denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, he also argued that individuals who are sick should pay higher premiums because they cost more money to insure. And just this morning, he mocked President Obama for extending health care to “everyone.”
11) HIS FAVORITE JUSTICE THINKS CHILD LABOR LAWS ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL: At a recent GOP debate, Santorum identified Justice Clarence Thomas as his favorite current member of the Supreme Court, even though Thomas believes that pretty much everything violates the Constitution. Thomas has repeatedly advocated a twisted reading of the Constitution that would invalidate a long list of essential laws, including the federal ban on workplace discrimination, similar laws protecting older Americans and Americans with disabilities, the national minimum wage, national child labor laws, and the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters.
12) MUSLIMS SHOULD BE PROFILED: During the CNN national security debate in November, Santorum endorsed the idea of profiling Muslims to increase airport security. “Obviously, Muslims would be someone you’d look at,” he told the debate’s moderator Wolf Blitzer. But his proposed profiling for the sake of national security follows a pattern of his holding anti-Muslim beliefs.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Mitt Romney and the Death of The American Dream
From The Washington Post -- January 3, 2012:
By Harold Meyerson
No longer the land of opportunity
“Over the past three years, Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society with an Entitlement Society,” Mitt Romney wrote in USA Today last month. The coming election, Romney told Wall Street Journal editors last month, will be “a very simple choice” between Obama’s “European social democratic” vision and “a merit-based opportunity society — an American-style society — where people earn their rewards based on their education, their work, their willingness to take risks and their dreams.”
Romney’s assertions are the centerpiece of his, and his party’s, critique not just of Obama but of American liberalism generally. But they fail to explain how and why the American economy has declined the past few decades — in good part because they betray no awareness that Europe’s social democracies now fit the description of “merit-based opportunity societies” much more than ours does.
The best way to measure a nation’s merit-based status is to look at its intergenerational economic mobility: Do children move up and down the economic ladder based on their own abilities, or does their economic standing simply replicate their parents’? Sadly, as the American middle class has thinned out over recent decades, the idea of America as the land of opportunity has become a farce. As a paper by Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution has shown, sons’ earnings approximate those of their fathers about three times more frequently in the United States than they do in Denmark, Norway and Finland, and about 11 / 2 times more frequently than they do in Germany. The European social democracies — where taxes, entitlements and the rate of unionization greatly exceed America’s — are demonstrably more merit-based than the United States.
That’s hardly the only measure by which Europe’s social democracies demonstrate more dynamism than our increasingly sclerotic plutocracy. Unemployment rates in Northern European nations — as of October, Germany’s unemployment rate was 6.5 percent; the Netherlands, 4.8 percent; Sweden 7.4 percent — are substantially lower than ours (9 percent then). Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Germany in particular have sizable trade surpluses, while the United States runs the largest trade deficits in human history.
There are, of course, a multitude of reasons the nations of Northern Europe are outperforming us. But if entitlements and social democracy were anywhere near the impediments to enterprise that Romney claims, Germany would hardly be the most successful economy in the advanced industrial world, with those of Scandinavia close behind.
The secrets of social democracy’s successes are in plain view. In Scandinavia, government commitment to worker retraining and job relocation mean that there is no major political pressure to keep failing firms in business; it’s a policy that favors innovative start-ups. In Germany, management and unions cooperate to upgrade their products and their processes — partly because corporate boards consist of equal numbers of management and worker representatives. Germany’s surge in exports may be partly attributable to its union workers agreeing to hold their wages flat (at levels still well above those of their U.S. counterparts). But their workers’ willingness to sacrifice in order to stay competitive is surely increased by the fact that their CEOs on average make just 11 times as much as their workers. In the United States, chief executives make roughly 200 to 300 times (choose your survey) as much as their average employees’ salary.
Which brings us back to Romney’s characterization of our country as a merit-based society and his failure to notice the huge changes in economic rewards over the past three decades. During the 30 years after World War II, the average American family’s income doubled, while chief executives’ income was restrained, increasing by less than 1 percent annually, according to a 2010 paper by economists Carola Frydman and Raven Saks. Beginning around 1980, however, as unions were smashed, industry moved offshore and executive pay skyrocketed, the incomes of most Americans began to flatten or decline, while financiers and corporate leaders were able to claim more and more of the nation’s income for themselves.
Corporate leaders have been rewarded with huge payouts even when their corporation’s performance has been disappointing. Conversely, millions of Americans have maintained or upgraded their skills yet seen their jobs shipped abroad or downgraded. Is this a description of a merit-based society? How does it compare with that of mid-century America, when the rewards for work were distributed more broadly?
Romney and his Bain Capital buddies may view their wealth as the just rewards endemic to successful people in a merit-based society. But why are so few Americans sharing in those rewards today while so many Americans shared in them 40 years ago? Are most Americans no longer meritorious? Or has our country ceased to reward any but the rich and powerful?
By Harold Meyerson
No longer the land of opportunity
“Over the past three years, Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society with an Entitlement Society,” Mitt Romney wrote in USA Today last month. The coming election, Romney told Wall Street Journal editors last month, will be “a very simple choice” between Obama’s “European social democratic” vision and “a merit-based opportunity society — an American-style society — where people earn their rewards based on their education, their work, their willingness to take risks and their dreams.”
Romney’s assertions are the centerpiece of his, and his party’s, critique not just of Obama but of American liberalism generally. But they fail to explain how and why the American economy has declined the past few decades — in good part because they betray no awareness that Europe’s social democracies now fit the description of “merit-based opportunity societies” much more than ours does.
The best way to measure a nation’s merit-based status is to look at its intergenerational economic mobility: Do children move up and down the economic ladder based on their own abilities, or does their economic standing simply replicate their parents’? Sadly, as the American middle class has thinned out over recent decades, the idea of America as the land of opportunity has become a farce. As a paper by Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution has shown, sons’ earnings approximate those of their fathers about three times more frequently in the United States than they do in Denmark, Norway and Finland, and about 11 / 2 times more frequently than they do in Germany. The European social democracies — where taxes, entitlements and the rate of unionization greatly exceed America’s — are demonstrably more merit-based than the United States.
That’s hardly the only measure by which Europe’s social democracies demonstrate more dynamism than our increasingly sclerotic plutocracy. Unemployment rates in Northern European nations — as of October, Germany’s unemployment rate was 6.5 percent; the Netherlands, 4.8 percent; Sweden 7.4 percent — are substantially lower than ours (9 percent then). Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Germany in particular have sizable trade surpluses, while the United States runs the largest trade deficits in human history.
There are, of course, a multitude of reasons the nations of Northern Europe are outperforming us. But if entitlements and social democracy were anywhere near the impediments to enterprise that Romney claims, Germany would hardly be the most successful economy in the advanced industrial world, with those of Scandinavia close behind.
The secrets of social democracy’s successes are in plain view. In Scandinavia, government commitment to worker retraining and job relocation mean that there is no major political pressure to keep failing firms in business; it’s a policy that favors innovative start-ups. In Germany, management and unions cooperate to upgrade their products and their processes — partly because corporate boards consist of equal numbers of management and worker representatives. Germany’s surge in exports may be partly attributable to its union workers agreeing to hold their wages flat (at levels still well above those of their U.S. counterparts). But their workers’ willingness to sacrifice in order to stay competitive is surely increased by the fact that their CEOs on average make just 11 times as much as their workers. In the United States, chief executives make roughly 200 to 300 times (choose your survey) as much as their average employees’ salary.
Which brings us back to Romney’s characterization of our country as a merit-based society and his failure to notice the huge changes in economic rewards over the past three decades. During the 30 years after World War II, the average American family’s income doubled, while chief executives’ income was restrained, increasing by less than 1 percent annually, according to a 2010 paper by economists Carola Frydman and Raven Saks. Beginning around 1980, however, as unions were smashed, industry moved offshore and executive pay skyrocketed, the incomes of most Americans began to flatten or decline, while financiers and corporate leaders were able to claim more and more of the nation’s income for themselves.
Corporate leaders have been rewarded with huge payouts even when their corporation’s performance has been disappointing. Conversely, millions of Americans have maintained or upgraded their skills yet seen their jobs shipped abroad or downgraded. Is this a description of a merit-based society? How does it compare with that of mid-century America, when the rewards for work were distributed more broadly?
Romney and his Bain Capital buddies may view their wealth as the just rewards endemic to successful people in a merit-based society. But why are so few Americans sharing in those rewards today while so many Americans shared in them 40 years ago? Are most Americans no longer meritorious? Or has our country ceased to reward any but the rich and powerful?
Monday, January 2, 2012
How Congressional Republicans Try to Bamboozle Ordinary Americans
From The New York Times -- January 1, 2012:
Nobody Understands Debt
By PAUL KRUGMAN
In 2011, as in 2010, America was in a technical recovery but continued to suffer from disastrously high unemployment. And through most of 2011, as in 2010, almost all the conversation in Washington was about something else: the allegedly urgent issue of reducing the budget deficit.
This misplaced focus said a lot about our political culture, in particular about how disconnected Congress is from the suffering of ordinary Americans. But it also revealed something else: when people in D.C. talk about deficits and debt, by and large they have no idea what they’re talking about — and the people who talk the most understand the least.
Perhaps most obviously, the economic “experts” on whom much of Congress relies have been repeatedly, utterly wrong about the short-run effects of budget deficits. People who get their economic analysis from the likes of the Heritage Foundation have been waiting ever since President Obama took office for budget deficits to send interest rates soaring. Any day now!
And while they’ve been waiting, those rates have dropped to historical lows. You might think that this would make politicians question their choice of experts — that is, you might think that if you didn’t know anything about our postmodern, fact-free politics.
But Washington isn’t just confused about the short run; it’s also confused about the long run. For while debt can be a problem, the way our politicians and pundits think about debt is all wrong, and exaggerates the problem’s size.
Deficit-worriers portray a future in which we’re impoverished by the need to pay back money we’ve been borrowing. They see America as being like a family that took out too large a mortgage, and will have a hard time making the monthly payments.
This is, however, a really bad analogy in at least two ways.
First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base. The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the income subject to taxation.
Second — and this is the point almost nobody seems to get — an over-borrowed family owes money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves.
This was clearly true of the debt incurred to win World War II. Taxpayers were on the hook for a debt that was significantly bigger, as a percentage of G.D.P., than debt today; but that debt was also owned by taxpayers, such as all the people who bought savings bonds. So the debt didn’t make postwar America poorer. In particular, the debt didn’t prevent the postwar generation from experiencing the biggest rise in incomes and living standards in our nation’s history.
But isn’t this time different? Not as much as you think.
It’s true that foreigners now hold large claims on the United States, including a fair amount of government debt. But every dollar’s worth of foreign claims on America is matched by 89 cents’ worth of U.S. claims on foreigners. And because foreigners tend to put their U.S. investments into safe, low-yield assets, America actually earns more from its assets abroad than it pays to foreign investors. If your image is of a nation that’s already deep in hock to the Chinese, you’ve been misinformed. Nor are we heading rapidly in that direction.
Now, the fact that federal debt isn’t at all like a mortgage on America’s future doesn’t mean that the debt is harmless. Taxes must be levied to pay the interest, and you don’t have to be a right-wing ideologue to concede that taxes impose some cost on the economy, if nothing else by causing a diversion of resources away from productive activities into tax avoidance and evasion. But these costs are a lot less dramatic than the analogy with an over-indebted family might suggest.
And that’s why nations with stable, responsible governments — that is, governments that are willing to impose modestly higher taxes when the situation warrants it — have historically been able to live with much higher levels of debt than today’s conventional wisdom would lead you to believe. Britain, in particular, has had debt exceeding 100 percent of G.D.P. for 81 of the last 170 years. When Keynes was writing about the need to spend your way out of a depression, Britain was deeper in debt than any advanced nation today, with the exception of Japan.
Of course, America, with its rabidly antitax conservative movement, may not have a government that is responsible in this sense. But in that case the fault lies not in our debt, but in ourselves.
So yes, debt matters. But right now, other things matter more. We need more, not less, government spending to get us out of our unemployment trap. And the wrongheaded, ill-informed obsession with debt is standing in the way.
Nobody Understands Debt
By PAUL KRUGMAN
In 2011, as in 2010, America was in a technical recovery but continued to suffer from disastrously high unemployment. And through most of 2011, as in 2010, almost all the conversation in Washington was about something else: the allegedly urgent issue of reducing the budget deficit.
This misplaced focus said a lot about our political culture, in particular about how disconnected Congress is from the suffering of ordinary Americans. But it also revealed something else: when people in D.C. talk about deficits and debt, by and large they have no idea what they’re talking about — and the people who talk the most understand the least.
Perhaps most obviously, the economic “experts” on whom much of Congress relies have been repeatedly, utterly wrong about the short-run effects of budget deficits. People who get their economic analysis from the likes of the Heritage Foundation have been waiting ever since President Obama took office for budget deficits to send interest rates soaring. Any day now!
And while they’ve been waiting, those rates have dropped to historical lows. You might think that this would make politicians question their choice of experts — that is, you might think that if you didn’t know anything about our postmodern, fact-free politics.
But Washington isn’t just confused about the short run; it’s also confused about the long run. For while debt can be a problem, the way our politicians and pundits think about debt is all wrong, and exaggerates the problem’s size.
Deficit-worriers portray a future in which we’re impoverished by the need to pay back money we’ve been borrowing. They see America as being like a family that took out too large a mortgage, and will have a hard time making the monthly payments.
This is, however, a really bad analogy in at least two ways.
First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base. The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the income subject to taxation.
Second — and this is the point almost nobody seems to get — an over-borrowed family owes money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves.
This was clearly true of the debt incurred to win World War II. Taxpayers were on the hook for a debt that was significantly bigger, as a percentage of G.D.P., than debt today; but that debt was also owned by taxpayers, such as all the people who bought savings bonds. So the debt didn’t make postwar America poorer. In particular, the debt didn’t prevent the postwar generation from experiencing the biggest rise in incomes and living standards in our nation’s history.
But isn’t this time different? Not as much as you think.
It’s true that foreigners now hold large claims on the United States, including a fair amount of government debt. But every dollar’s worth of foreign claims on America is matched by 89 cents’ worth of U.S. claims on foreigners. And because foreigners tend to put their U.S. investments into safe, low-yield assets, America actually earns more from its assets abroad than it pays to foreign investors. If your image is of a nation that’s already deep in hock to the Chinese, you’ve been misinformed. Nor are we heading rapidly in that direction.
Now, the fact that federal debt isn’t at all like a mortgage on America’s future doesn’t mean that the debt is harmless. Taxes must be levied to pay the interest, and you don’t have to be a right-wing ideologue to concede that taxes impose some cost on the economy, if nothing else by causing a diversion of resources away from productive activities into tax avoidance and evasion. But these costs are a lot less dramatic than the analogy with an over-indebted family might suggest.
And that’s why nations with stable, responsible governments — that is, governments that are willing to impose modestly higher taxes when the situation warrants it — have historically been able to live with much higher levels of debt than today’s conventional wisdom would lead you to believe. Britain, in particular, has had debt exceeding 100 percent of G.D.P. for 81 of the last 170 years. When Keynes was writing about the need to spend your way out of a depression, Britain was deeper in debt than any advanced nation today, with the exception of Japan.
Of course, America, with its rabidly antitax conservative movement, may not have a government that is responsible in this sense. But in that case the fault lies not in our debt, but in ourselves.
So yes, debt matters. But right now, other things matter more. We need more, not less, government spending to get us out of our unemployment trap. And the wrongheaded, ill-informed obsession with debt is standing in the way.
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