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Rethinking the Romney meme

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

It’s been conventional wisdom for quite a while that Romney, mass of warts and all, is nonetheless the strongest candidate the Republicans have for the general election. I bought into that, and while I’m not quite ready to declare outright apostasy, I think the argument is losing a lot of its force awful fast. Newt is every bit as big a liar as Newt, and would arguably be an even worse president, but he’s glib, and he expresses himself with a faux conviction that almost perfectly resembles the real thing.

Romney has two things going against him and they feed into one another.

The first is the fact that he is a flesh and blood exemplar of the privileged status that the rich have consolidated in this country. Of course, they’ve always had a certain amount of privilege, but it’s grown with the growth of inequality. It would be one thing if he regularly condemned his privileged treatment, as both Obama and, in the past, Bill Clinton have done. But he can’t bring himself to condemn the disparity in tax rates that requires a working stiff to fork over a higher percentage of his income than a guy who sits back and collects interest.

The second is his total inability to even feign being a normal person. He just can’t help himself. Consider this article, in which we learn that Romney, a la Clinton, feels the pain of his base:

“The banks are scared to death, of course,” he said. “They’re feeling the same thing that you’re feeling…”

Bear in mind that the “you’re” he’s referring to are flesh and blood people, who actually have the capacity to be scared. The truth is, Romney feels the banks pain in a way that he can never feel the pain of the losers who have lost their jobs and/or home on the altars of high finance. Worse, he finds it impossible to even pretend that he cares about normal people. Every time he tries, he comes across as a transparent phony. 

I don’t know if the people around him are trying to rein him in or to teach him how to fake a connection to the 99.9%, but if they are, they have failed, and the fault is not theirs but in Willard. He will continue to say stuff like the above until the day of the election, if he manages to wrest the nomination from Newt.

Has ever a political party put on offer such a collection of clowns? Our local Republicans run people for the school board who are more qualified to be president. 

Along these lines, I must pass along a few lines recently uttered by Fidel Castro. Hey, when he’s right, he’s right:

“The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is — and I mean this seriously — the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been,” said the retired Cuban leader, who has dueled with 11 U.S. administrations since his 1959 revolution.

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Hilarious

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Colbert on Rick Santorum

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Indecision 2012 – Rick Santorum’s Senior Pandering
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive
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Random thoughts on the SOTU

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

 A few days ago I expressed the hope that Obama would go for the votes, and not the money, by rejecting a proposed sweetheart deal in the bank fraud settlement talks. It looks like he’s done that, and that, at least rhetorically, he’s turned up the heat and given his talk some credibility by appointing Eric Schneiderman to co-head the investigation. (See here, however, for a view that is, at least for the moment, more cynical than mine).

One thing that Obama has going for him on all of these inequality issues is that the Republicans are so pathological. Like Pavlov’s dog, they are conditioned, so whatever he says they immediately take the opposite position. He really should try declaring that the sky is, without doubt, blue, just to see how many of them would take the bait. The idea of the rich paying a tax rate at least equal to what the rest of us pay is actually quite popular, for reasons that are mysterious only to Republicans, but that won’t stop the Republicans from attacking the idea. No matter how much they whine about job creators they will be on the losing side of this issue, especially if they nominate Willard, the poster boy for the inequities of our tax system.

Speaking of Willard, it really is beginning to look like, as between him and the lizard, Newt would be the stronger candidate in the general. I’ll say it again, Obama is the luckiest guy in the world.

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How private equity works

Monday, January 23, 2012

 Good, concise explanation at the New Yorker of how private equity companies like Bain work, and how these exemplars of private enterprise depend on government subsidies of one form or another to thrive. 

Part of the process: load the acquisition with debt for the sole purpose of paying yourself a special dividend:

As a result, private-equity firms are increasingly able to profit even if the companies they run go under—an outcome made much likelier by all the extra borrowing—and many companies have been getting picked clean. In 2004, for instance, Wasserstein & Company bought the thriving mail-order fruit retailer Harry and David. The following year, Wasserstein and other investors took out more than a hundred million in dividends, paid for with borrowed money—covering their original investment plus a twenty-three per cent profit—and charged Harry and David millions in “management fees.” Last year, Harry and David defaulted on its debt and dumped its pension obligations. In other words, Wasserstein failed to improve the company’s performance, failed to meet its obligations to creditors, screwed its workers, and still made a profit. That’s not exactly how capitalism is supposed to work.

Those pension fund obligations? We taxpayers pick those up, while the fund managers pay tax at half the rate the rest of us do. 

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Here they go again

Monday, January 23, 2012

 The Obama folks may be working toward a deal with the banks that essentially transfers more money to….you guessed it…the banks. 

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Scotty Walker writes to my wife

Monday, January 23, 2012

Somehow, and no matter how it was, it was she did nothing to deserve it, my wife has ended up on a right wing mailing list. It first started with Sharon Angle (remember her?) and as these things will, it has metastasized until just about every right wing organization is writing to her.

She normally writes back. No use wasting the free postage on those business reply envelopes.

Today, she got a missive from Scott Walker, who is warning his fellow conservative that if big unions can have their way in Wisconsin, it could happen here! Poor Scotty is the victim of a number of nefarious plotters:

President Obama’s Political Machine.

The Moveon.org Radicals.

Liberal Billionaire George Soros’ attack organizations.

The Ultra-Left Wing Elites from Hollywood and Manhattan.

The list goes on and on, and the millions pile up.

All poor Scotty has to combat them are the millions from the Koch Brothers. Assuming, of course, that they haven’t decided that he’s toast and that, anyway, he’s served his purpose.

This kind of stuff makes me wonder if there is another country in the world in which such a large portion of the population has been propagandized not only into voting against its own interest, but in funding the people that are doing the propagandizing. I get it that the Koch Brothers achieve their purposes (It is not enough that they succeed, everyone else must fail) by funding this guy, but whom among the 99.9% benefits?

If the Democrats have their smarts about them (is that an oxymoronic statement?) they would, in states like Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Florida, campaign against the newly elected and, for the most part, deeply unpopular governors as exemplars of what we have to look forward to if the Vulture (yes, I still think he’ll win) gets elected. 

UPDATE: Looks like the unions has the same idea that I did. 

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Now if Ron Paul were president we could fix this situation

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Condensed version of great New York Times article on why IPhones can’t be Made in the USA: the 13th amendment banned slavery. 

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Obama Sings

Saturday, January 21, 2012

 He can drive you crazy sometimes, but you can’t help liking him. That may be the key to this year’s election, since you can’t help loathing the competition.

 

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Will Obama pity the poor banks?

Saturday, January 21, 2012

If an email I received from Moveon is accurate, we may find out soon whether Obama will give a giant gift to American banks:

 

Breaking: There are reports that in the next 48 hours President Obama could make a decision on whether to hold Wall Street accountable by opening a full investigation into the banks’ role in the housing crisis, or give them a sweetheart deal that lets them off the hook. This is it!

 

The banks would argue that they need it, and given the perverse prevailing logic they can make a compelling case. The Bank of America, for instance, has struggled so badly that it had a negative tax rate, entitling it to millions in federal subsidies. How can it be expected to make the consumers it defrauded whole? And if it did, what would be the point, as those same consumers, in their role as taxpayers, would end up picking up the tab.

 

I don’t know if the meeting is as crucial as Moveon claims, though the threat of an eventual sellout is depressingly real.  Its source is Mike Lux at the Huffington Post, who writes:

 

Progressive activists should feel incredibly good about all they have accomplished in the last year, and should feel good as well that President Obama — even if it is sometimes more slowly or reluctantly than we would like — is understanding that on a range of issues, it is politically smart of him to be aligned with these grassroots movement. But it is also no time to pat ourselves on the back: over the next 72 hours, an enormous issue will probably get resolved that will be the biggest single thing that will determine whether the dead housing market, as well as the broader economy, will get a boost that will bring it to life: the bank settlement deal. How this issue gets resolved not only will have a massive impact on the economy, it will go a very long ways in whether the President can credibly run for re-election as the guy who took on Wall Street and held them accountable when the chips were down.

 

I consider myself a student of American history, but I admit that the gilded age holds no charms for me and I have tended to neglect it, so maybe there’s more than ample precedent for this type of activity, but I can’t recall a time when corporations openly lobbied-no, rather insisted- that they be immunized from the legal consequences of their own intentional law breaking.  Not that it hasn’t been done, only that usually it’s done in Mitt’s “quiet rooms”. This open insistence is not new in this new and improved gilded age; recall that the telecoms demanded and got immunity for illegally tapping people’s phones. I’m somewhat hopeful that if this weekend is indeed critical, Obama will decide that he needs votes and semi-energized feet on the ground, more than he needs money, of which he already has an ample supply. Fact is, at this point the smart money is probably coming around to the view that it’s getting four more years of Obama no matter which clown emerges alive from the circus, so back the banks or not, he’ll still get their money. 

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Lon Seidman hits the big time

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Lon Seidman, who I’ve kidded here on occasion for his technophilia, has been invited to the White House to tweet the State of the Union address. You can follow Lon at @lonpaul.

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