Free Pussy!

How the worm has turned. A mere 20-odd years ago the Soviet Union was an atheist country, its leaders calling religion the opiate of the masses. Now the first Communist country in the world has put three women from the punk performance art group "Pussy Riot" on trial for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred." Ekaterina Samutsevich, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina have been in jail since February, and could face seven years in prison.

What constitutes "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred?" Singing a "punk prayer" called "Holy Shit" on the altar of Moscow's main cathedral. Pussy Riot (the actual name of the group, in English and not a translation from Russian) recorded their crime and conveniently posted it on the Internet for Moscow prosecutors:

The translation:

Mother of God, Virgin, deliver us from Putin
Deliver us from Putin, deliver us from Putin

Black robes, golden epaulets
All the parishioners are crawling to worship
The ghost of freedom in the heavens
Gay pride is sent to Siberia in chains

The head of the KGB, their chief saint
Leads protesters to prison under escort
In order to avoid offending the Most Holy.
Women need to give birth and love

Shit, shit, Holy Shit
Shit, shit, Holy Shit

Mother of God, Virgin, become a feminist
Become a feminist, become a feminist

The church praises corrupt leaders
The procession of black limousines
The preacher comes to your school
Go to class -- bring him money!

Patriarch Gundyayev [the head of the Orthodox Church in Russia] believes in Putin
It would be better if he believed in God, bitch
The cincture of the Virgin is no substitute for protest
The Ever-Virgin Mary will be with us!

Mother of God, Virgin, deliver us from Putin
Deliver us from Putin, deliver us from Putin

Yeah, it ain't Bob Dylan. But does it deserve seven years hard time?

At a concert in Moscow Madonna showed her support for Pussy Riot by stripping to her bra and showing the group's name written on her back. Yoko Ono, Peter Townshend and other artists have also voiced their support for the women.

That this is all happening in front of the world, all over the Internet, shows how much Russia has changed since the days of the Soviet Union. That the Orthodox Church is letting an autocrat use them to oppress the dissent of three women shows how little organized religion has changed since the days of the tsars.

And That's The Problem

The recent shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin has been officially declared an act of domestic terrorism. Wade Page has been connected to various white supremacist movements and took it upon himself to rid the world of some non whites. Sadly, he was successful.

My first thought (as it always is) was that it won't be too long before we find out that he was taking an SSRI and suffered from some sort of clinical depression. After that, I rolled my eyes at the renewed calls for gun control as anyone with a brain can see that these incidents happen less often and violence is, in fact, continuing to drop every year. Remember, folks, the media likes to make money and they make this shit seem like it happens all the time and right NEAR YOU!!! Ahhhhh, look out!!!!

As I reflected further about this latest shooting and tried to make sense of all of it, I started thinking about Jared Loughner and how my thoughts at the time were off base. My main contention then was that people like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Michele Bachmann created a culture (through their words and actions) that led to Loughner going on his rampage. But that's not quite right.

Even if the police found Palin stickers and a Limbaugh radio subscription, they still wouldn't be responsible. Even if Loughner or Page came out and said, "I love Michele Bachmann and am a proud supporter. Her talk of Muslim infiltration and enemies of the state made me do it!" they still wouldn't be responsible. The ones that are responsible are Loughner and Page. But that doesn't let the Terrible Trio off the hook. Not by a long shot.

While it's wrong to say that their creation of a culture of hate and fear caused these shootings, it's absolutely correct to say that their backwards as fuck ideology (bordering on psychotic) doesn't help. 

And that's the problem.

Each of these people (along with many more like them) have a responsibility as public figures to serve the common good. When they talk about traitors and infiltration as opposed to working together and respecting everyone's rights and freedoms, the don't advance any sort of social cohesion. There may not be causation or correlation between their words and actions and this type of violence but it's continued practice and existence is divisive, not constructive. 

I know that folks like Limbaugh, Palin. and Bachmann are earning their livings off of panic mongering but ti shouldn't be at the expense of this nation. This is now true more than ever as the power in our world shifts to shared responsibilities. We have no time for secret plots, dog whistles, reverse racism and subtle intimations of non whites threatening our way of life. 

That is, of course, if we want to continue making money.

Hoo-Ra!

Is this Cool, or What?

The American Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took a picture of the Curiosity rover as it landed on Mars last night about 12:30 AM.

Curiosity decelerated from 13,000 mph as it hit the Martian atmosphere to 2 mph in about seven minutes using a heat shield, a parachute and a retro-rocket that dangled the rover gently above the Martian surface and then cut loose at the last second. The rover landed a couple hundred yards from its intended landing spot after traveling eight months and 350 million miles.

People who keep saying that government in general is incompetent and can't do anything right don't know what they're talking about. The US military and NASA are perfect examples of government agencies that can accomplish the impossible with that old-fashioned can-do American attitude.

Even after getting hammered by the terrible human disasters of the Apollo 1 fire, the Challenger explosion in 1986, the disintegration of the Columbia over Texas, and the loss of the Mars Polar Lander, NASA soldiered on, landing on the moon, completing the shuttle's mission, and landed three more rovers on Mars.

There's no reason why the rest of government can't have similar successes, if our politicians would quit using the people who work there as political whipping boys and just let them do their jobs.

On Stiglitz (Part Two)

In the second chapter of The Price of Inequality, Joseph Stiglitz discusses how an unequal society is created. From the outset, he discusses how this is allowed to happen.

Much of the inequality that exists today is a result of government policy, both of what the government does and does not do. Government has the power to move money from the top to the bottom and the middle, or vice versa.

Wow. What a commie.

He then goes on to discuss the concept of rent seeking and how people in power use it to manipulate the government into doing their bidding, hence the increased inequality. But aren't these people in power faced with a choice?

To put it baldly, there are two ways to become wealthy: to create wealth or to take wealth away from others. The former adds to society. The latter typically subtracts from it, for in the process of taking it away, wealth gets destroyed. A monopolist who overcharges for his product takes money from those whom he is overcharging and at the time destroys value. 

Right. That's the erosion of consumer surplus of which I often speak. So how does the latter (taking away wealth) actually happen? Well, it starts with many wealth creators not being satisfied with their wealth. So they seek to monopolize or rent seek even further. We saw this with the railroad barons of the nineteenth century and I think we are seeing it again today. So does Stiglitz.

Why does this happen? Stiglitz submits that Smith's invisible hand doesn't apply to our financial sector because their interest are not aligned with societal returns. They are, instead, aligned with their own interests and that of other people in the one percent. It's not a zero sum game but a negative sum game, where the gains to the winners are less than losses to the losers. As Smith himself said

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

We saw this go on with the stock pools in the 1920s and the credit default swaps and CDOs in 2008. In fact, Stiglitz argues that private financial firms act to ensure that markets don't work well. Why? Because they can make more money. If markets are competitive, after all, profits above the normal return to capital cannot be sustained.

That is so because if a firm makes greater profits than that on a sale, rivals will attempt to steal the customers by lowering prices. As firms compete vigorously, prices fall to the point that profits (above the normal return to capital) are driven down to zero, a disaster to for those seeking big profits. 

He goes on to discuss how they teach students in business school to create barriers to competition and entry to a market as well as circumvent government regulation. Essentially, how to erode consumers surplus, make markets less efficient, and continue to widen the gap between the interests of the financial sector and the interest of society. In short, increase inequality.

Indeed, the financial sector has become quite adept at doing this. On pages 36-38, there is a section called  "Moving money from the bottom of the pyramid to the top" in which Stiglitz offers examples of how exactly this is accomplished.

-Taking advantage of asymmetries of information (selling securities that they had designed to fail, but knowing that buyers didn't know that)

-Taking excessive risk-with the government holding a lifeline, bailing them out, and assuming the losses, the knowledge of which, incidentally, allows them to borrow at a lower interest rate than they otherwise could

-Getting money from the Federal Reserve at low interest rates, now almost zero

And the worst, according to Stiglitz?

-Taking advantage of the poor and uninformed., as they made enormous amounts of money by preying upon these groups with predatory lending and abusive credit card practices. This took many forms...changing high interest rates, sometimes obfuscated by fees...the abolition of usury laws...circumventing regulations. Rent-a-Center, for example, claimed to be renting furniture but was really selling it and lending money at high interest rates. 

One poor person by themselves couldn't have done this. As there were so many, the amount of debt was astronomical. If the government had intervened in the best interests of social justice or concern of market efficiency, none of this would have happened.

Now there are many who think that it was the government, not the private sector, that drove this rush to lend to poor people through the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. To put it bluntly, this is a giant load of shit. Here is one example of why that is.  And here is another.  And another. And another.  As we saw in House of Cards and Inside Job, this debacle originated in the private sector (specifically California) and happened simply because people in the financial sector (and then everyone else) wanted to make more money.

So, the financial sector was (and still is) more focused on circumventing regulations and exploitative activities than economic growth. As I have shown repeatedly, they don't contribute to our society in any meaningful way from an economic standpoint. Indeed, from Adam Smith's standpoint.

What other ways shift money from the bottom to the top?

-Those at the top have managed to design a tax system in which they pay less than their fair share-they pay a lower fraction of their income than do those who are much poorer. We call such tax systems regressive.

-The hollowing out of the middle class and the increase in poverty due to laws that govern how corporations interact with the norms of behavior that guide the leaders of these corporations and determine how returns are shared among top management and other stakeholders. If monetary authorities act to keep unemployment high (even because of fear of inflation), then wages will be restrained. 

And who is it that heavily influences those authorities?

Moreover, the very sharp attacks on unions have weakened have weakened the individual's power over the corporation. We currently have about 7 percent of our population that are in private sector unions.

Stiglitz concludes this section by stating that market forces combined with politics (both of which should work in a balance to lessen inequality) have actually joined forces to increase income and wealth disparity.

All in all, it's not a pretty picture and it continues to get worse. There are no words that I can use to express my frustration at the right who view this information as being "commie talk." I urge all of you to read the rest of Chapter 2 of Stiglitz's book as it details more ways (too lengthy to mention here) that the wealthy are rent seekers.

They May Not Like Big Government But...

Take a look at this poll conducted earlier in the year by Gallup.

29 percent of Americans are satisfied with the size and power of government. No surprise there. But only 30 percent are satisfied with the size and power of corporations. Americans may not like Big Government but they don't like Big Corporations either. Take a look at how the numbers break down by political ideology.

A couple of key numbers here...independents distrust corporations nearly as much as the government. And I was fairly shocked to see that Republicans are split on corporations. What do you suppose that means?

Amen

A Bad Week (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Harry Reid)

I've been pretty critical when it comes to the subject of Harry Reid. In the past, I've referred to him as several limp noodles on two slices of milk dunked toast.

But his recent indictment of Mitt Romney is a stark contrast to his previous persona. I think the thing I like about it the most is how much in common it has with statements made by the right on a daily basis. In other words, it's about fucking time a Democrat started saying things that may or not may not have any basis in fact but have absolutely everything being pissed off and pulling shit out of one's ass (sort of like how the government forced banks to loan to black people and Hispanics and that's why the economy collapsed).

We really don't know if Romney paid taxes or not but what's great about Reid's statement is how fucked Romney is right now. If he does not release his taxes, the "lie" is out there and people will doubt him. If he does release his taxes and they show that he did pay them over a ten year period, Reid has manipulated Romney (just as the right manipulates the left all the time) into doing something he doesn't want to do: release his taxes...which will undoubtedly show that Romney made a shit ton of money, has hid some of it offshore, was more involved at Bain during their layoffs and outsourcing, and paid less than Warren Buffet's secretary. Heck, even the National Review is calling for Romney to release his returns now. 

Of course, Romney's own tax plan doesn't help him at all. 

But what does the TPC analysis actually tell us–meaning us people who aren’t campaigning to be president–about the Romney tax plan? It’s well summarized by Figure 2 from the paper, above, which decomposes the bottom line conclusion that a revenue-neutral Romney plan would give generous tax cuts to the rich paid for with net tax increases on everyone else, into two parts: (i) how much the tax cuts from the tax rate reductions are skewed toward the rich; and (ii) how much the revenue offsets from (Romney-limited) base broadening are skewed toward lower- and middle-income households. Combined, we would end up with a revenue-neutral (relative to a business-as-usual, policy-extended baseline) and highly “regressive” tax reform, with relative and absolute tax burdens falling for “the rich” (defined here as households with incomes above $200,000–about the top 5%) and increasing for everyone else.

Seriously, are you fucking kidding me? What a massively stupid idea given the current perception of government and the economy. Yes, let's give the wealthy more breaks...that's going to go over well with the middle class, non college educated whites voting in the coming election.

Add all of this in with his stumbles on his recent trip abroad and it's understandable why Romney has lost ground in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.  With less than 100 days to go before the election, Governor Romney is going to have a very difficult time making up that ground. The Obama team has already pulled their ads in Pennsylvania to focus on other key swing states. In short, it's not been a good week for Mitt Romney.

And all of this just before he picks his VP...

Nope. No racism here. Please move along....

On Stiglitz (Part One)

I first heard of Joseph Stiglitz's new book, "The Price of Inequality," from a very conservative friend of mine on Facebook. His comment was...

How about stop focusing on making things "fair" and let the chips fall where they may? Kind of like....oh...I don;t know...OLD SCHOOL AMERICA? No, no, better to listen to the liberal commie fuck professor who never worked in the private sector and wants MORE taxes, rules and regulations to make things "fair." Fucking idiot.

Anytime I see this sort of mouth foaming, I know it must be something worth reading!

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be discussing Stiglitz's book and highlighting the parts of it that I think are important. Each post I put up will more than likely be on one specific point although not always as is the case with this first one.With over 100 pages in sourced information, there is going to be a lot to choose from and I want to make it clear from the outset that there is no way I can get to it all. This would be why I would recommend reading the book for yourself so you can study the full argument from the one who put in all the research that led him to a central and inevitable conclusion: the inequality in this country endangers our future.

Now, before we get started, I want to clear up an issue that came up in comments the last time we talked about inequality. I was tasked to come up with a number of what is too much inequality. As Stiglitz points out in the first chapter in the book, relying solely on a quantitative analysis isn't an accurate way of examining inequality.

On page 23, he discusses the Gini Coefficient and how it is used as a standard measure of inequality. A GC of 0 (in which the bottom 10 percent get 10 percent of the income, the bottom 20 get 20 etc) is the most equal. A GC of one (in which all the income goes to 1 person) would be the most unequal. In between 0 and 1 are where countries are measured. More equal societies have around 0.3 (Sweden, Norway, Germany) and less equal countries have 0.5 or above (African nations and South America). The US stands at .47, up from .4 in 1980. We are more unequal than Iran or Turkey and very much more equal than any country in the EU.

Yet, as Stiglitz notes,

Measures of income inequality don't fully capture critical aspects of inequality. America's inequality may, in fact, be far worse than those number suggest. In other advanced industrial countries, families don't have to worry about how they will pay the doctor's bill, or whether they can afford to pay for their parent's health care. Access to health care is taken as a basic human right. In other countries, the loss of a job is serious, but at least there is a better safety net. In no other country are so many persons worried about the loss of their home. For Americans at the bottom and in the middle, economic insecurity has become a fact of life. It is real, it is important, but it's not captured in these metrics. If it were, the international comparisons would cast what's been happening in America in an even worse light.

So, choosing a number shouldn't be the exclusive focus when you consider the multiple factors (some of which he mentions above) that make each country's economic concerns unique. Obviously, it's a starting point but it needs to be put into context with other, qualitative factors. An example of this would be the current economic situation in the EU. They may have 0 3 on the GC but isn't that equality an illusion considering what they are facing right now?

Further, is the GC even accurate? What are the factors that they use? Why? And why don't they leave out some factors, if any? The answers to these questions illustrate the flaws in focusing on one measure of inequality.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, let's take a look at the first point Stiglitz makes in Chapter 1: the disparity in income. Stiglitz is quick to point out that he is looking at median, not average income, as that is more of an indicator of how the various income groups are doing. If you look at average income, it might seem like the lower groups are doing well since the upper groups are seeing their wages and wealth rise.

But if you look at median income, you see the following:

Median household income was actually lower in 2010 ($49, 445) than it was in 1997 (adjusted for inflation, $50, 123). Over the longer period (1980-2010), median family income essentially stagnated, growing at an annual rate of only .36 percent. Adjusted for inflation, male median income in 2010 was $32, 137. In 1968, it was $32, 844. (source and source.)

Add in the fact that the top one percent now earns 20 percent of the nation's income with the top 0.1 percent  earning 220 times larger than the average of the bottom 90 percent and the picture of gross inequality is stark and evident.

So, why does this matter? Page 85.

Moving money from the bottom to the top lowers consumption because higher income individuals consume a smaller proportion of their income than do lower income individuals (those at the top save 15 to 25 percent of their income, those at the bottom spend all of their income). The result: until and unless something else happens, such as an increase in investment or exports, total demand in the economy will be less than what the economy is capable of supplying-and that means that there will be unemployment.

Unemployment can be be blamed on a deficiency in aggregate demand; in some sense, the entire shortfall in aggregate demand-and hence the US economy-today can be blamed on the extremes in inequality. 

As we have seen, the top 1 percent earns 20 percent of the national income. If that top 1 percent saves some 20 percent of its income, a shift of just 5 percentage points to the poor or middle who do not save-so the top 1 percent would still get 15 percent of the nation's income-would increase aggregate demand directly by 1 percentage point. But as that money recirculates, output would actually increase by some 1.5 to 2 percentage points.

This kind of shift in income would decrease the unemployment rate from 8.3 percent to 6.3 percent. A broader redistribution, from the top 20 percent to the rest, would have brought down the unemployment further to a more normal 5 or 6 percent. 

This is at the heart of what the president and the Democrats are trying to do because they know it's what must be done in order to get the economy on track. Businesses aren't going to hire more people unless more people start coming through the door and buying their goods and services. We've seen that tax cuts don't spur hiring.

Eventually, the 0.1 percent, the 1 percent, and the top 20 percent are going to realize that if they want to continue to enjoy their wealth in a healthy society, this redistribution is going to have to happen. People like Warren Buffet and Nick Hanauer have already accepted this fact. Whether or not the government "forces" them to do so is irrelevant.

It's no longer a question of "if" but of "when."

Personally, I'd like the wealthy of this country to do it on their own. That way we can leave the sensitivity about the federal government (see: paranoia, hysterical old ladies) behind in the trash heap where it belongs. Obviously, this isn't likely but we have to do it. As Stiglitz puts it,

Countries around the world provide frightening examples of what happens to societies when they reach the level of inequality toward which we are moving. It is not a pretty picture: countries where the rich live in gated communities, waited upon by hordes of low income workers; unstable political systems where populists promise the masses a better life, only to disappoint. Perhaps most importantly, there is an absence of hope. In these countries, the poor know that their prospects of emerging from poverty, let alone making it to the top, are minuscule. This is not something we should be striving for.

An Engineering Solution

Last year Richard Muller, the Berkeley scientist who headed the Koch-funded global warming study, announced that global warming was actually occurring. Now he has completed another study that acknowledges that the warming measured is completely due to carbon dioxide emitted by humans.

Muller was immediately attacked by climate change deniers like Anthony Watts, who released a dueling study claiming that NOAA artificially doubled temperature increases. Note that Watts isn't saying that there's no temperature increase, he's just quibbling over the amount.

We can now see conservatives starting to pivot on climate change. They can't simply deny it any more: climate change is obviously happening, what with the increasingly weird weather we've been having (more tornadoes, more drought), measurably higher sea levels on the east coast, demonstrably earlier springs and later winters, migrating species (resulting in dying forests and rampant wildfires in the west), and the melting of the polar ice caps.

In June Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, admitted that climate change was happening. He blithely stated that it was "just an engineering problem" and we'll just adapt. Yes, it's true: rebuilding your house after it's destroyed by a hurricane or a tornado is "just a construction problem." Moving millions of people out of Miami and Manhattan after sea levels rise is "just a relocation problem." Rising temperatures and climate shifts that turn America's breadbasket into a dustbowl are "just an agriculture problem."

As we continue to burn so much oil and coal, there will be climate winners and losers. Tillerson's "engineering problems" will cost some people trillions of dollars to fix and displace millions of people. The economies of some states and countries that just happen to be in the wrong end of the climate stick may be completely destroyed. Some island countries will simply cease to exist.

Rex Tillerson profits from the thing that causes climate change, and he wants to stick the rest of us with the bill for fixing the problems that his product causes. This attitude makes him, in engineering parlance, a "dick."

But if we're going to blithely talk about engineering solutions to climate change, the most obvious one is to stop using so much coal and oil and start generating more electricity with wind, solar and other technologies. After all, there's only a finite amount of oil left in the ground, which we will nearly deplete in my lifetime. We'll never really run out because it'll get so expensive no one will ever bother to drill the last drop.

From an engineering perspective, the internal combustion engine is a dying technology, soon to be made obsolete by a lack of fuel. Best to switch sooner than later, since it's got so many other downsides to it. And if we Americans do it, we'll get in on the ground floor and become the providers for the rest of the world. In addition to being an engineering solution, it's also a business opportunity!

Hmm....

They're All above Average

Ever notice that while everyone else's pay is going down, CEO pay is going up? There's a reason for that: they cheat.

When compensation committees (typically made up of other CEOs and their buddies) figure out how much execs should get paid, they typically create a "peer group" of similar companies, and use that information to determine how much their CEO should get paid.

The problem is the compensation committees cherry-pick the companies in the peer group, selecting companies like 3M that pay their execs more:

Indeed, 3M Co. was the most popular "peer group'' company in corporate America in 2011. It was included in the compensation analysis of 62 U.S. firms -- more than any other company, according to Equilar, an executive compensation data firm. 

Although companies use a variety of factors in selecting peers, high CEO pay plays a factor. 

"Why is the company so popular?" asks Carol Bowie, head researcher for the Americas group at Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), a proxy advisory firm. "There could be a variety of reasons, but it is certainly notable that [former CEO George Buckley's] pay was high relative to other peers.

 I guess CEOs, like the children in Lake Webegon, are all above average.

Indeed

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody Analytics, once and for all has settled (with the help of the CBO) the 500+ comments thread from a while back over at TSM.

Some supporters thought the lower tax rates would spur much stronger economic growth, and a few even hoped there would be so many new, high-paying jobs that tax revenues would actually increase, despite the lower rates. There is no evidence that this happened, however. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the Bush-era tax cuts cost the U.S. Treasury $1.6 trillion during the 2000s. Combined with the $1.2 trillion spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the $1.8 trillion needed to fight the Great Recession, this put the federal government deeply into the red. The nation's debt load today is as heavy as it has been since the 1940s and getting heavier.

To put it simply, they didn't generate growth nor revenue. Now that that is settled (although I'm nearly certain that the financial wizards at TSM, with their vast experience and day to day work with economics, will disagree:)), how do we solve the problem of the deficit? Well, exactly like I have been saying...one third tax cuts, two thirds spending cuts.

Extend the tax cuts for everyone except high-income taxpayers. The economy isn't great, but it is strong enough to handle higher tax rates on the wealthy. And we need the extra revenue, which under reasonable assumptions would reduce the federal deficit by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade.

Raising tax rates on wealthier households is necessary, but so, too, are more cuts in government spending. Washington last summer agreed to cut $1 trillion over 10 years as part of the deal to raise the Treasury's debt ceiling. Even with $1 trillion in additional tax revenues from affluent households, it will take an additional $2 trillion in cuts, under reasonable assumptions, to get our fiscal house in order. Given how politically difficult this will be, any agreement to raise taxes on the wealthy should also include more cuts in government spending.

And what will the result of all this be?

If policymakers follow this script, federal tax revenues will eventually rise to equal just over 19 percent of the nation's GDP, and government spending will fall to the equivalent of 21.5 percent of GDP. These are roughly the average ratios seen since 1980. In other words, government's role in our economy and our lives will be about what it has been for the last three decades. The deficit will still equal 2.5 percent of GDP (21.5 percent minus 19 percent); while more than ideal, this will be manageable, given the economy's expected growth.

That's right, folks, it's just that simple. Anyone think it will happen?

No Apologies Anywhere

As Mitt Romney travels abroad, it's important to point out his standard line about President Obama apologizing too much for the United States is one gigantic load of bullshit.

The Washington Post has an article detailing where this lie (see: Breaking the 8th Commandment)  originated. More importantly,.the Fact Checker illustrates, in a very complete way,  how this is lie is a four Pinocchio whopper. Example:

The Heritage Foundation list is also a stretch. Again, nothing akin to the word "apology" is ever used by Obama. In most of these cases, Obama is trying to make a clear distinction with his predecessor, much as Ronald Reagan did with Jimmy Carter, or George W. Bush with Clinton. Guantanamo or the war on terrorism figures in four of the so-called apologies -- and it is noteworthy during the 2000 campaign that Obama's GOP opponent, Sen. John McCain, also had said he would close the facility. Obama's comments express a disagreement over policy, not a distaste for the nation.

If one actually pays attention to what the president said as opposed to listening to the greatest propaganda experts since Goebbels, there is nothing close to an apology in any of his speeches.

Of course, he is Barack X, so there's no way that he can possibly be tougher than a Republican so...

I Love My Wife

Unless you live on a desert island and are completely self sufficient, you are part of our society which is, in fact, a collective. Grow the fuck up.
----Mrs. Markadelphia, last week.

Romney Didn't Build That

Last week President Obama gave a speech in which he said:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

Republicans have gone wild over the speech, intentionally misrepresenting what Obama said. "That" is a collective demonstrative pronoun relating to "roads and bridges." Yes, he could have said "those" or "that infrastructure" to be clearer. If Obama's intention was to say that business owners didn't build their own businesses, he would have said, "If you've got a business -- you didn't build it."

But if Republicans are going to carp about this niggling detail in Obama's speech, it's only fair to look at the niggling details of the business that W. Mitt Romney claims makes him qualified to lead this country, Bain Capital. Did he really build that?

I draw upon information on Romney's biography from this Wikipedia entry.

Romney went to public primary school, then attended a prestigious prep school paid for by his wealthy parents. He went to prestigious Stanford for a year, paid for by his wealthy parents. At age 19, during the height of the Vietnam War when men of the same age were volunteering for service or being drafted, Romney went to France for 30 months, presumably at the expense of his wealthy parents and/or the Mormon Church. Romney used four student deferments and a ministerial deferment to avoid serving in Vietnam (in 1969 his high number in the draft lottery kept him safe).

To be fair, being a missionary isn't necessarily draft dodging: all Mormons are expected to go on a mission. The Mormons I've known personally went on missions long after Vietnam was over. To be equally fair, however, the Mormons I know didn't go to France to live in a castle, eat brie and convert Protestants and Catholics to Mormonism. They went to third-world countries to build houses and feed starving kids.

Romney returned to the US and attended BYU, again presumably on his parents' dime. He then went to Harvard Business School. By all accounts Romney wasn't a stellar student (I have to wonder why all those pundits on Fox News aren't after Romney for his college transcripts).


Afterwards Romney went into management consulting. He was eventually hired by Bill Bain at Bain & Company. When Bain wanted to start a new venture in private equity and asked Romney to run it, Romney initially refused. After Bain restructured the deal so there would be no professional or financial risk to Romney, Mitt took the job. That was Bain Capital, Romney's baby.


Romney then went around trying to convince wealthy people to invest in the company. As detailed on this blog, he got about a third of the capital to start Bain from foreign sources, including many investors who eventually wound up in jail or were associated with Salvadoran death squads. I don't believe in guilt by association myself, but it's something that Republicans apparently value highly, because they constantly bring up Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, two men with whom Obama has only passing association.


Bain Capital's basic business model was explicitly to never do anything on their own: they talked other people into giving them money to perform corporate surgery on troubled companies. Bain bought businesses with borrowed money in highly leveraged buyouts. He then tried to turn them around by changing management practices, reorganizing, firing employees, etc. On several occasions the companies Bain bought went bankrupt after Bain forced them to take out loans in order to pay Bain lots of cash.

Romney never created anything in business from nothing, with his own money, his own ideas and his own initiative. The path for him was always paved by someone else: parents, teachers, professors, the Mormon Church, Bill Bain, wealthy investors, original company founders.

Are there people who do create something from nothing, people who got no help from parents, who got where they are solely through hard work and individual initiative? Yes, but they're extremely rare, and many Republicans would rather these people not be in this country. Take, for example, Harold Fernandez who is now a cardiac surgeon. Originally from Colombia, he entered this country illegally at age 13 on a leaky boat filled with illegal immigrants. He graduated valedictorian of his class and enrolled at Princeton with a fake green card and a stolen Social Security number. But even so, Fernandez didn't do it all alone: he got scholarships that were endowed by wealthy donors who were giving back to Princeton for all that Princeton gave them. Through their generosity, a person of meager means can enjoy the same advantages that Mitt Romney did.

I don't pretend I did it all myself: my parents were borderline poor, so I qualified for about $3,600 dollars in Pell grants over four years. That was almost enough to pay for tuition at a public university at the time. I also had a job and lived at home. My dad often asked to "borrow" a hundred bucks here or there to make ends meet. That small investment the government made in my education resulted in me paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal taxes, a fabulous return on the investment.

My dad, a rabid Tea Partyer, tried 50 years ago to create a business from nothing, but eventually gave up as larger companies squashed him in both building maintenance and real estate. Why? Because to succeed while going truly alone is almost impossible. My dad would hire other guys, but would never partner with them. That doomed him to always staying small. He ultimately went to to work as a bus driver and is now retired on Social Security and a pension from a municipal bus company.


And even the star of Mitt Romney's "You Didn't Build That" ad, Jack Gilchrist, received more than a million dollars worth of government contracts, tax-exempt revenue bonds, and federal Small Business Administration loans.

And, of course, Gilchrist didn't really build that company. His dad did.

The Ebb and Flow of Jobs

The other day my colleague on this blog said that jobs lost in 2008 will never come back. While some jobs may not be coming back in the next few years, he's wrong in the long term: we have seen this kind of job exodus in the past, and lot of jobs have actually returned. But it won't make Americans happy, because when those jobs do come back there may not be as many of them, they may not be in the same place and they will probably pay a lot less.

First, the article Mark referenced about the rising middle class across the world is correct: people in the developing world have been enjoying greater prosperity, in large part because American and European companies have been shipping jobs there for decades. As more people are employed in those countries the demand for their labor goes up, so their wages goes up, so more people are enjoying middle class incomes.

But as a result of these jobs being exported to other countries, competition for workers has decreased in the United States. This, combined with the destruction of labor unions, has resulted in stagnant and/or falling wages for the majority of Americans. American tax policies tilted in favor of multinational corporations have expedited job losses. Not only do Americans lose income when jobs are offshored, they wind up having to pay more taxes (or suffer larger deficits and government interest payments) because companies get a tax break for firing Americans.

Now, there are significant costs with offshoring jobs: relocating manufacturing to China has large transportation costs. For example, the United States exports iron ore to China and imports finished steel back from China. Over time transportation, energy and Chinese labor costs will continue to rise. At some point the cost of the energy required for transportation will exceed the labor cost differential between the US and China, the Chinese government will no longer be able to subsidize production, and it will no longer be cheaper to import Chinese steel. Steel production could then move back to the United States. (It could move somewhere else in the meantime, like Africa, if they have the raw materials and build the infrastructure to make exploiting low-wage workers profitable.)


How do I know this will happen? It already did in the automobile industry.

After WWII a lot of manufacturing was relocated to Japan there because labor was so cheap. "Japanese" became synonymous with "cheap," and not in a good way. Over time Japanese corporations began to expand their operations from the simple to the complex. Honda, for example, started out making motorcycles. Then they started making tiny cars for the Japanese market. In the 70s those cars were small and flimsy, but they were fuel efficient. During the energy crisis a market developed in the United States for those cars. Over time the quality of Japanese cars improved, and their exports grew. Then the Japanese made bigger and fancier cars specifically for the American and European markets. Over time time the Japanese standard of living rose to equal or exceed that of America, which meant that wages increased. Japanese auto manufacturers responded by building robots that reduced the number of employees required.

But Japan is an island with almost no resources: no coal, no iron ore, no oil. They have to import almost everything required for the production of automobiles, and then they have to ship all those heavy cars overseas. It became more and more difficult to make cars profitably in Japan, even with robots.

So Japanese car manufacturers started building factories in the United States. Production of cars used to be located primarily in Detroit at unionized factories, but the new Japanese factories were built in the non-union southern states. Toyota and Honda will build 15 million cars in the United States in 2012. Some German car makers also have plants in the USA. Even Ikea has an American factory.

At some point the same thing will happen with other industries that are currently located in China and India. Certain jobs will return to the United States as the rising price of energy drives up transportation costs. As wages in India rise and wages fall in the United States, even jobs like call center techs may move back here because the wage differential is too small to make up for deficiencies of offshoring customer service jobs: time zone differences, language differences, cultural differences, and the difficulties of managing off-site employees. Anyone whose ever called an offshore tech support line knows what I'm talking about...

In the long haul, sources of energy, the location of raw materials and the attendant costs of moving those raw materials and finished products will ultimately determine where jobs go.

There are, however, some jobs that will never come back due to changes in technology: the need for ferriers and harness makers all but disappeared when cars displaced horse-drawn carriages. The need for typists and typesetters has all but disappeared as computers entered the workplace. In the future, as oil supplies dwindle millions of people will lose their jobs in refineries and oil fields.

New jobs will be created as new sources of energy are developed. Because established business is only concerned about next quarter's profit numbers, they are terrible at investing in revolutionary new technologies.

At the same time Republicans are excoriating President Obama for loan guarantees for Solyndra (guarantees which the Bush administration was pushing for as well), the Chinese government is subsidizing renewable energy technologies, positioning themselves to dominate our energy future.

Well, At Least He Admits It

Not a single case of voter fraud in the state of Pennsylvania which makes me wonder...isn't this one of those needless laws that an over reaching government passes?

Oh well, at least GOP State House leader Mike Turzai admits what the real purpose of the law. All I have to do is let them speak:)

Yeah, seriously, WTF??!??

Be A Man...SUE!

I've always been amused when the right froths at the mouth of about trial lawyers and tort reform....and then turns around and engages in exactly that sort of behavior. 

The former top Senate staffer and key GOP strategist, who was fired after having an affair with Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, filed a wrongful termination suit Monday against his former employer that could bring allegations of discrimination, sexual affairs and backroom politics into open court. 

His complaint alleges that "similarly situated female legislative employees, from both political parties, were not terminated from their employment positions despite intimate relationships with male legislators."

Oh really? Hee hee hee....

A Severe Disconnect From Reality

This video below demonstrates how truly disconnected the right is from reality.

 

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

He's the "Obamamateur, Campaigner in Chief who hates America!"

They simply can't take yes for an answer so they have to invent a fictional person in place of the real one. Correct me if I'm wrong on this one but doesn't that break the 8th Commandment?

The Problem With Racism is Matt Drudge

I know several people that read the Drudge Report every day. This is dedicated to you.

A Wish That Will Likely Never Be Filled

As we draw nearer to election day this year, I want to reiterate one of my main complaint about the president. He (and Mitt Romney) need to be honest about the jobs that were lost in 2008. In short, they aren't coming back.

Why?

Well, here's a very good explanation. 

The middle class in the developing world is rising. The only question is how high it will go and how fast it will get there. About 85 percent of the world's people live in developing countries, yet they accounted for only 18 percent of global consumer spending just a decade ago; today, they account for nearly 30 percent. Consumer spending in developing countries has been increasing at about three times the rate in advanced countries, and we're not just seeing a growing demand for necessities, but also for middle-class staples such as meat, toothpaste, cell phones, and air-conditioners.

When you spend nearly 70 years spreading the word of free markets and capitalism, you get....free markets and capitalism. 

So when politicians complain about jobs being shipped overseas (and this is a case where both sides really are the same), it's basically a lie. If you want freedom and prosperity around the world, then you have to be able to put up with the increase in the labor pool which will result in unemployment at home.

The good news for our country is that we are providing much of the world with these products. Granted, the labor is coming from places like China and India but the higher end roles in private organizations are being filled by Americans. Bottom line...if you are unemployed, you need to continue your education so you can be more marketable in the world.

As Thomas Friedman noted last January, it's Made in The World now.

And So It Begins...

The second-guessing and accusations have begun in the shootings in Aurora. But Russell Pearce is blaming the victims, accusing them of cowardice.


Pearce is the former Arizona state senator who authored the controversial Arizona immigration law. He was recently booted out of office in a recall election. He posted the following on Facebook in response to the shootings in Colorado:

Had someone been prepared and armed they could have stopped this "bad" man from most of this tragedy. He was two and three feet away from folks, I understand he had to stop and reload. Where were the men of flight 93???? Someone should have stopped this man. Someone could have stopped this man. Lives were lost because of a bad man, not because he had a weapon, but because noone was prepared to stop it. Had they been prepared to save their lives or lives of others, lives would have been saved.

It is a delusion that someone armed with a concealed handgun could have stopped James Holmes. The events in Aurora were nothing like Flight 93, and more closely resemble the North Hollywood Shootout. In that incident two bank robbers in body armor and armed with AR-15s modified for full automatic fire held off police for half an hour. The cops had to wait for SWAT teams with rifles to show up because their handguns couldn't penetrate the robbers' armor.

Like the North Hollywood robbers, Holmes had a plan. He entered the darkened theater from an exit door he had propped open after scouting out the theater and the people inside. According to reports, he was wearing body armor, including a ballistic helmet, groin protection, and a gas mask. He announced himself as the Joker, making many think it was some sort of pre-arranged stunt. (He had even died his hair orange, though as all true Batman fans know, the Joker's hair is green.)

Holmes threw gas canisters into the audience and fired an assault rifle that had a 100-round drum. He shot babies and their mothers, children, teenaged girls, young men, even members of the military. When the AR-15 jammed he switched to .40 caliber Glocks. Anyone who got up to flee was shot.

After 90 seconds it was over. Holmes left the theater. He was apprehended because one of the officers on the scene noticed that Holmes' armor didn't match theirs.

Now look at the difficulties facing the audience. First, it was dark. Then there was the gas, obscuring their vision and making them tear up. Before charging off after Holmes, people had to make sure their children and girlfriends were safe. Then there were rows and rows of seats between them and Holmes, filled with screaming men, women and children ducking for cover. The floor was slick with blood. 

Now let's say that some of those in the audience had concealed weapons. Hitting Holmes in the dark, smoke-filled auditorium while blinking back tears would be next to impossible. Most of the shots fired at Holmes would miss. Where would those rounds go?

It would literally be a circular firing squad. If 10 people had 17-round clips in their Glock 9 mm pistols, that would be 170 more bullets flying around that movie theater. There would have been dozens more casualties.

Even if their aim were true, Holmes was wearing body armor. Like the cops facing the North Hollywood robbers, Holmes' armor would have stopped their handgun bullets. But after shooting at Holmes they would have his attention. He would return fire, hitting either them or their friends around them.

On Flight 93 things were nothing like Aurora. The heroes of 9/11 had plenty of time, in comparison to the 90 seconds the theater patrons had. The hijackers took over the cockpit at 9:31, leaving the passengers free in the cabin. Many of them made phone calls and they learned that planes had already been flown into the World Trade Center. Unlike the audience in the theater, the passengers on Flight 93 knew exactly what the terrorists had in mind. They even took a vote about whether they should storm the cabin, which they did at 9:57. The plane crashed at 10:03.

Aurora is the perfect example of why concealed handguns offer no protection. Trained cops armed with handguns were helpless against armored robbers during the North Hollywood shootout in broad daylight. What hope could the audience in the dark, gas-filled theater have against the similarly armored Holmes?

The bad guys will always have the upper hand. They have all the time in the world to plan their attack, stockpile their weapons, prepare their defenses, pick their location, find the holes in security, surveil their victims. To question the bravery of the victims in the theater and to claim that handguns would have stopped anything is the height of foolishness.

As a result of a few attacks by foreign terrorists millions of travelers must suffer long lines at airports, waste billions of hours at airports, take our shoes off, face restrictions on bringing liquids on planes, submit to intrusive body searches and repeated exposure to X-ray scans, and on and on. Republicans like Pearce are willing to disenfranchise millions of voters by requiring photo IDs to stop a few instances of voter fraud. Republicans like Pearce want to empower the police to stop anyone on the street and harass them for their papers.

Is it so unreasonable to ask gun owners to accept the same sorts of minor inconveniences that everyone else has to endure to reduce the number of people killed by our own domestic terrorists?

The Hammer Falls

Today the NCAA put the hammer down on Penn State: all victories from 1998 to 2011 will be vacated, the school must pay a $60 million dollar fine (equal to one year of profit from the football program), a loss of some scholarships, and the football program will be banned from post-season play for four years. It's a harsh penalty, but it's not the death penalty.


A lot of people, especially rabid sports fans, think this is totally unfair. They don't think the NCAA has jurisdiction, there was a rush to judgment, they didn't give PSU due process, they didn't wait until the case played out in the courts and all the appeals were exhausted. Somehow Sandusky's conviction doesn't matter to these folks.


But that's all irrelevant, because the NCAA isn't a government organization. It's a club that universities are invited to join. As such, it has the right to pick and choose its members. If one of its members does something that it perceives as corrupt, or has the appearance of corruption, it has the right to punish such behavior to discourage other schools from making the same mistakes.


The fact that Paterno wasn't convicted in a court of law is irrelevant. It's not a crime for boosters to give athletes cars or for students to play professionally before participating in an NCAA program. But such infractions will get your football program banned and its victories vacated in a heartbeat. If giving an athlete cash so he can pay his mom's rent is an infraction, letting former coaches use the shower to molest children should be an infraction as well.

The NCAA has a lot of problems. Many of its rules seem pointless and ridiculous, especially for "non-revenue" programs. The question of unpaid student athletes playing in college football and basketball programs that are essentially farm teams for the NFL and the NBA is particularly vexing. Hundreds of football players suffer permanent injuries from multiple ACL tears, to concussions, to broken necks. Some even die on the field. It makes you question why unpaid student athletes are the backbone of a multibillion dollar sports franchise, and why we even have football programs at universities. But that's a question for another day.

Yes, this punishment will hurt more than a hundred athletes and coaches who had nothing to do with Paterno's disgrace. It will hamstring the Penn State program for a decade. It will disappoint thousands, if not millions, of football fans. But maybe the next coach who finds himself in the same situation will do the right thing. Maybe the next university president will have the guts to stand up to a coach whose fans think he's the right hand of God.

The problem is, this entire fiasco was self-inflicted. If Paterno had turned in Sandusky way back when, he would have been the hero for doing the right thing, the hard thing, the sort of thing that he was famous for. Why didn't he? Why didn't he stay true to what he was?

That question is the most disturbing. Because it makes us wonder whether Joe Paterno ever really was that guy.

The Statue Comes Down

Last week someone flew a plane over Penn State trailing a banner that read, "Take the statue down or we will." Fearing violence between students standing watch over the statue and those who planned a Saddam-statue takedown, Penn State has removed the statue of Joe Paterno.

Paterno had taken on the stature of a demigod at Penn State. The Freeh report, released last week, determined that Paterno knew a lot more about Jerry Sandusky's crimes than he pretended to, and was involved in the decision to do the "humane" thing and cover up Sandusky's child abuse, allowing him to continue molesting children.

A typical reaction from Penn State was that of the statue's sculptor, Angelo Di Maria:

"When things quiet down, if they do quiet down, I hope they don't remove it permanently or destroy it," he said. "His legacy should not be completely obliterated and thrown out. ... He was a good man. It wasn't that he was an evil person. He made a mistake."

But this truly mischaracterizes what happened. In the beginning there were only vague suspicions about Sandusky, and Joe Paterno could stand by and silently acquiesce to Sandusky's evil, having no clear knowledge of it. But when Mike McQueary saw Sandusky sodomizing a child in the shower, the issue was forced. At that point Paterno could have continued to stand by and let justice follow its course. Instead, he actively intervened and prevented the incident from being reported to the police.

When you come right down to it, there is no one worthy of the sort of adulation we heap upon people like Joe Paterno, or Tiger Woods, or Barry Bonds, or Charlie Sheen, or Mel Gibson. They are all fallible people with their own blind spots and deficiencies. These guys are not heroes. They are not all that brilliant or moral. They are just like us. They are just doing a job that happens to be entertaining us.

The irony of this sorry story is that Joe Paterno was famous for being the exception to the corrupting influence of celebrity. He seemed to be a normal, moral, modest person who had not succumbed to the adulation of millions.

The people who are still trying to hang on to the Joe Paterno myth don't get it, but they share some of the blame for his fate. They put Paterno on that incredibly high pedestal and set him up for the big fall. If his fans had not built up his ego so high, had not made a college football program into the Second Coming, then perhaps Paterno would have stayed the modest and moral man he was when he started out.

A Hard Sunday Lesson Learned

Caught this headline the other day and laughed my pants off

Republican Horrified to Discover that Christianity is Not the Only Religion

But one Louisiana Republican is learning the hard way that religious school vouchers can be used to fund education at all sorts of religious schools, even Muslim ones. And while she's totally in favor of taxpayer money being used to pay for kids to go to Christian schools, she's willing to put a stop to the entire program if Muslim schools are going to be involved.

Well, that has to suck for her.

I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America's Founding Fathers' religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools. I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school.

Uh, there's only one problem there, Ms. Hodges.

As The Friendly Atheist points out, the brand of Christianity currently espoused by many in the religious right wing would be pretty unrecognizable to the Founding Fathers, who were pretty high on Deism and pretty low on Christian rock concerts/ talking about The Children's collective virginity/ having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But whatever. Facts are immaterial at this point.

The Founding Fathers came from many different religious backgrounds and were products of the Age of Enlightenment. Many viewed Christianity as I do...that Christs's moral teachings are just as important as his holiness.

And didn't Thomas Jefferson have a copy of the Koran?

Good Point

Wait For It

My initial thoughts on the Aurora, Colorado shooting...

Let's all remember that violence continues to decline in this country even as we see media reporting of violent crime rising at ridiculous rates. As we see the media beat this story to death, bear in mind that this sort of incident is an outlier.

More importantly, within a week we will discover that Mr. Holmes was taking an SSRI. It won't come out right away so wait for it to be buried in a deep background story that won't be at the top of any news page.

I'm happy that these drugs have brought relief from depression to most people but the downside is that we have to deal with this sort of thing every once in awhile. Do the benefits outweigh the costs?

"FUCK YOU, DAD!!!"

(stomp....stomp...stomp down the hall)

(SLAM!)

(muffled, from inside the teenager's bedroom)

"I'm old enough to do whatever I want. I don't have to live by your rules!!!"

Bain Birth Pain

When W. Mitt Romney started Bain Capital in 1984 he had trouble raising money from old-money American families. So he had to look further afield. An article in the LA Times identifies some of the international investors who helped Mitt Romney get off the ground. They provided a third of the capital used to start Bain. These include:

• Sir Jack Lyons, a Briton who used a Panamanian shell company and a Swiss money manager to hide his identity. Lyons was convicted of stock fraud, had his knighthood stripped and only escaped prison because of his poor health.
• Salvadoran expatriots living in Miami. In one family, the de Solas, one brother was connected to right-wing death squads in El Salvador, while another is serving a prison sentence for fraud.
• Robert Maxwell, a British publishing baron, who after his drowning was discovered to have stolen hundreds of millions from his company's pension funds.

Some of Bain's initial investors were not so notorious: a Monsanto exec, a guy who started the Panamanian stock exchange and an ambassador.

These offshore investors used Panamanian shell corporations and secret bank accounts. These were notorious havens for tax evasion and drug money laundering scams during in the 1980s, when Romney was starting Bain. It was so bad that the United States invaded Panama in 1989 and captured its dictator, Manual Noriega, who had been on the CIA payroll since the 1950s. Noriega was jailed and convicted on drug charges. After serving a prison term in the US, he was extradited to France and then Panama where he's still in prison.

Republicans love to play the guilt by association game with President Obama, constantly linking him to Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers just because he had met them. But Mitt Romney's claim to fame, Bain Capital, was started in that shady underworld of secret foreign bank accounts and shell corporations. These people gave him millions of dollars. They got him off the ground.

What kind of influence will people like this have over Romney? Do they have information, which if released, would discredit him? Could they then use such information to blackmail him? These are exactly the kind of questions the FBI asks when people are considered for security clearances. When the FBI asks, you don't have a choice about answering. Has the FBI asked these questions?

Maybe this is another reason Romney he doesn't want to release his tax returns.

Go Start A Business in Pakistan or Russia

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together" ---President Barack Obama 13 July 2012


The above quote from last Friday sent the right into a fit of adolescent hysterics. Cries of "Nanny State" were heard all over the right wing blogsphere as conservative pundits rebelled against "Dad" and screamed, "No fair! I can do whatever I want on my own!! I don't need anyone's help. ANYONE!!!" (stomp...stomp...stomp...door slams to teenager's room).

The president is correct, of course, and Sally Kohn's recent piece over at Fox News illustrates just how accurate the president is on the role of government in our lives.

My grandfather was a small business entrepreneur. He owned a clothing store in Penns Grove, New Jersey, and families came from across the southern part of the state to get slacks and blouses and jumpers for their kids. My grandfather employed two people who earned decent, middle class wages and made a good living for himself, probably upper middle class for that region. And good for him. He worked hard and earned it. 

But there were things that helped my grandfather’s business that he didn’t have to pay for. The roads trucks drove on to bring him products to sell. The court system that incorporated his business and protected the patents of what he sold. The police force that made it safe for people to shop there. The public schools that taught his employees how to read and do math, so my grandfather didn’t have to teach them. Make no mistake about it — my grandfather succeeded because of his hard work and initiative. But government played a supporting role.

Yeah, that's exactly right. For all their talk of "nanny states," the right count on government support just as much as anyone else. Ridiculous as these adolescent ravings are, this is even worse.

Today, hedge fund managers and big business CEOs pay lower tax rates than middle class families. In fact, the tax rate for the very wealthy is the lowest it’s been in over 60 years.

That’s right: We’re not even debating whether the wealthy should pay more than middle class workers. President Obama wants the very rich to pay the same rate as the rest of us. Those who have succeeded in our country, in part with the help of our public infrastructure, should just bury their money in off-shore accounts and loopholes? That’s un-American. Those who do well in America should do well by America — and pay their fair share of taxes so others have the same opportunity to succeed.

Can we at least start with the same rate? Conservatives used to champion the flat tax but now any talk of "paying their fair share" results in howls of socialism and nanny state waste. Kohn's right. This whole conversation is completely ridiculous.

We succeed because of our individual initiative but also because of the public investments that help springboard that success. Don’t believe me? Then go start a business in Pakistan or Russia. American entrepreneurs succeed in part because they’re in America. And in America, we don’t get ours and then yank away the ladder of opportunity for the next generation. 

We can slash Medicare and Social Security and public schools and college grants and all of the stepping stones that poor and middle class families have historically relied on to help climb the ladder of prosperity. Or millionaires and billionaires can pay the same tax rate as the middle class.

One of the greatest lies that has been perpetuated by the right (and sadly believe by far too many) is that we have to gut government to save the middle class from socialism. In truth, this lie is told to further protect the wealth of people that wouldn't have it without the support of the federal government.

Perhaps the federal government should stop giving them handouts if they are going to continue to bite the hand that feeds even them.

Cracked?

Found this old piece from two years ago that I never shared. I think I had planned on it right around the time Andrew Brietbart passed suddenly and thought it might be in poor taste at the time since Klinghoffer makes a  dig at him.

Yet now that the late Mr. Brietbart has been "cultified" with the "Brietbart is Here" photos, I think it's just fine to highlight two or three of Klinghoffer's points.

But more characteristic of conservative leadership are figures on TV, radio and the Internet who make their money by stirring fears and resentments. With its descent to baiting blacks, Mexicans and Muslims, its accommodation of conspiracy theories and an increasing nastiness and vulgarity, the conservative movement has undergone a shift toward demagoguery and hucksterism. 

Once the talk was of "neocons" vs. "paleocons." Now we observe the rule of the crazy-cons.

Pretty much a daily occurrence on all the right wing blogs. No doubt it is profitable and has become a very large industry, but can it influence elections on a consistent basis? I don't think so.

When I became a conservative, that is what I signed up for: a profound vision granting transcendent significance to public life and hope in private life. The goal wasn't to defeat Democratic officeholders or humiliate left-wing activists. It was, and still is (among those who remember) to save civilization.

Now, the goal is to destroy it even if they are ignorant to this plain and simple fact.

Why Romney Might Not Want to Reveal His Tax Returns

Because Romney was Bain, the release of his tax records will expose most of Bain's activities, as well as the activities of other Bain execs.

I have relatives who own a private company like Bain, so I know a bit about how privately held corporations work. My brother-in-law's company runs absolutely everything through the business. They have "stockholder meetings" in Utah during ski season. The company leases "company cars" for teenage children of execs. They have a company-owned chalet in Utah. The company has luxury boxes at pro football and hockey games. They have subsidiaries in Arizona and Florida that they visit during the winter. Flying to and staying in all these vacation destinations is a tax-deductible "business expense."

Many wealthy people freely intermingle personal and business expenses to maximize their tax savings. I don't know exactly what Bain did along these lines, but the potential for savings is astronomical. Depending on how they incorporated, the entire Bain management staff could wind up paying next-to-no personal taxes at all, as well as having the company foot the bill for everything from their cars, houses, clothes, kids' braces and mistresses' apartments. Things that mere mortals have to pay for by themselves.

So even if Romney didn't do anything illegal, releasing his tax records will expose to the world the sweetheart deals that execs get. It will name names and will give investigators thousands of leads to follow up on. Every day after the records are released until the election there will be a non-stop litany about this foreign account, that dummy corporation, this sports car for Tagg leased by Bain, that deduction for Ann Romney's sewing circle.

And it's not just protection from Democratic attacks. Romney's tax records could well reveal many embarrassing facts that will outrage Republicans: he may have donated to worthy social causes that they cannot abide, such as Planned Parenthood.

One commentator I read said a Romney aide intimated that Mitt would quit the campaign before releasing these records. If his tax returns reveal him to be a closet liberal, that would be the smoking gun his conservative enemies could use to deny him the nomination and choose a real conservative instead.

The Pressure Builds

First, the Christian Science Monitor...now, these guys...

 “The cost of not releasing the returns are clear,” said conservative columnist George Will, on ABC’s “This Week.” “Therefore, he must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.”

“There’s obviously something there, because if there was nothing there, he would say, ‘Have at it,’” GOP strategist and ex-Bush aide Matthew Dowd said. “So there’s obviously something there that compromises what he said in the past about something.”

“Many of these politicians think, ‘I can do this. I can get away with this. I don’t need to do this, because I’m going to say something and I don’t have to do this,’” Dowd said. “If he had 20 years of ‘great, clean, everything’s fine,’ it’d all be out there, but it’s arrogance.”


On “Fox News Sunday,” the Weekly Standard’s editor Bill Kristol added his voice to the list as well, calling for Romney to “release the tax returns tomorrow” and “take the hit for a day or two.”

Add in Governors Barbour, Bentley, and former RNC Chair Michael Steele and Mitt Romney has a really big problem now.