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“The Reek Of Entitlement”: The GOP Only Represents The Super-Rich

“Too much money” sounds like an oxymoron, especially when applied to American politics. But in the last week, Republicans are beginning to learn that lots of money can have its downside. Thursday’s story that Romney may have actively directed Bain Capital three years longer than he claimed – a period in which Bain Capital-managed companies experienced bankruptcies and layoffs – caps what must be the worst weekly news cycle of any modern American presidential candidate. From images of corporate raiding, to luxury speedboats, to offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands, to mega-mansions in the Hamptons, this week’s stories suggest that the candidacy of Mitt Romney – poster-boy for the symbiotic relationship between big money and the modern Republican party – is in serious trouble.

Last weekend’s photos of the Romney clan on a luxury speedboat cruising around a lake in New Hampshire, where their multimillion-dollar compound sits, were startling in their tone-deafness. And just to make sure the sentiment wasn’t lost on anyone, at a campaign event the same week, Obama recounted childhood memories of touring the US with his grandmother by Greyhound bus, even the thrill of staying at a Howard Johnson motel. In a smart political calculation, the Obamas chose to forgo their annual summer vacation in Cape Cod (a nice upper-middle class vacation spot, mind you, but nowhere near the same league as the Romney estate). Instead, Obama was photographed visiting a senior citizens’ home in the battleground state of Ohio.

And the hits kept coming. Next, Vanity Fair published an article listing the Romneys’ various offshore investment accounts worth potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in the secretive tax havens of Cayman Islands and Bermuda, as well as a since-closed Swiss bank account. Democrats stoked the predictable outrage from the revelations. On the Sunday ABC news program “This Week”, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley thundered:

“Mitt Romney bets against America. He bet against America when he put his money in Swiss bank accounts and tax havens and shelters.”

On the same program, Bobbie Jindal, Republican governor of Louisiana, could only lamely respond:

“In terms of Governor Romney’s financial success, I’m happy that he’s a successful businessman.”

While there is no evidence that the Romneys illegally evaded taxes through their various offshore accounts (their secretiveness making it impossible to tell), the reek of entitlement became overwhelming when it was revealed that the Romneys had accumulated somewhere between $20m and $101m in an “IRA”, a tax-advantaged retirement account designed for middle-class savers, limited to a few thousand dollars a year contribution. As one commenter parried, “I may be stupid, but I ain’t no fool.” In other words, we might be too stupid to understand how Romney was able to obtain all these tax breaks legally, but we aren’t fooled about unfairness of it all.

Well, at this point, you might think that the next sighting of Romney would be of him clothed in ash-cloth ladling out soup at an inner-city soup kitchen. But no. Next, we were regaled with the New York Times story of a lavish fundraiser in the Hamptons hosted by the infamous David Koch, the billionaire benefactor of conservative causes. The optics were worse than bad, as the Times recounted how one woman in a Range Rover, idling in a 30-deep line of cars waiting for entry, yelled to a Romney aide, “Is there a VIP entrance? We are VIP.”

Romney was expected to haul in several million dollars from his trip to wine and dine with the billionaires of the Hamptons. But why risk confirming the very message that Democrats have been hammering upon: that Romney is a super-wealthy elitist whose objective is to further the interests of the 0.01%?

Certainly, billionaires for Romney would have given him those millions without the face-time and the photo-ops, the chance to dress up and be seen. And to be heckled by Occupy Wall Street protesters and parodied by reporters. What is so very puzzling about the whole episode is the sheer in-your-face-ness of it.

Yet, perhaps that is the point. As a very perceptive article in the New York Magazine, Lisa Miller describes how new psychological research indicates that wealth erodes empathy with others. In the “Money-Empathy Gap”, Miller cites one researcher who says that:

“The rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests above the interests of other people. It makes them more likely to exhibit characteristics that we would stereotypically associate with, say, assholes.”

Researchers found a consistent correlation between higher income, management responsibility and disagreeableness. One researcher interpreted her findings to imply that money makes people disinterested in the welfare of others. “It’s not a bad analogy to think of them as a little autistic” says Kathleen Vos, a professor at the University of Minnesota.

If this research is accurate (as it seems to be, replicated in various ways by several researches), the synergies between it, the increasing concentration of wealth and the Citizens United ruling, have striking implications for the future of the Republican party. As Newt Gingrich, the uber-southern politician, plaintively explained how he lost the Republican primary: “Romney had 16 billionaires. I had only one.” The domination by the super-wealthy means that Republicans not only have no interest in the welfare of the rest of the 99.9%, they have no understanding of why this is a problem. The noblesse oblige days of the old money, such as the Bushes, the Kennedys and the Roosevelts are long gone, replaced by the new mega-money of hedge funds, corporate raiders and global industrialists.

How else can one explain the allegiance of the Republican party to the profoundly unpopular Ryan tax plan, which would eviscerate Medicare and Medicaid while delivering more tax cuts to the rich? What is the future of a party in a democracy when the powers-that-be can no longer even understand, much less address, the welfare of the vast majority of its citizens?

Taking the hint, the Obama administration is finally positioning itself firmly on the side of progressives, attacking income inequality and holding Republicans accountable for their assaults on the middle and working classes. How ironic it would be if, after all, the other side’s big money is the answer to the Democrats’ prayers.

 

By: Robin Wells, The Guardian, July 12, 2012

July 15, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“That’s All That’s Necessary”: Mitt Romney, “I’m Not Releasing Any More Tax Returns”

The most newsy item of Mitt Romney’s media blitz of network interview after network interview Friday night was his bold statement that he would not release any more tax returns than the two years he has already planned, despite growing pressure from President Barack Obama, Democrats and even some Republicans.

He said basically the same thing in every interview, but we’ll pick out two — from CBS with Jan Crawford and CNN with Jim Acosta. Here’s what he told CBS’ Crawford:

CRAWFORD: Governor you mentioned the tax returns. You’ve released one year of your tax returns. A lot of people are saying you should release more, you’ve got to go back to the early 1980s for a Republican — or a presidential candidate who has only released one year of tax returns. Are you going to be releasing more tax returns?

GOV. ROMNEY: Yes, I’ll be releasing this year’s tax returns as soon as they’re available. And uh – But I know, by the way, you can never satisfy the opposition research team of the Obama organization. They’ll always want more. And the answer is they’ll have this year’s and last year’s and that’s the information that, by the way, is not required by law. It’s the same type of information that was provided by Senator McCain and his campaign. It gives people a full review of my income and my expenses and that kind of matter. I’ll tell ya, it’s quite a process running for president. You obviously provide all the information you can about yourself and then you have all the opposition team say some pretty outrageous things which I think are very, very disappointing on their part.

And here’s what he told CNN’s Acosta:

First of all, we’ve complied with the law. The law requires us to put out a full financial disclosure. That I’ve done. And then, in addition to that, I’ve already put out one year of tax returns. We’ll put out the next year of tax returns as soon as the accountants have that ready. And that’s what we’re going to put out.

I know there will always be calls for more. People always want to get more. And, you know, we’re putting out what is required plus more that is not required. And those are the two years that people are going to have. And that’s all that’s necessary for people to understand something about my finances. And, look, if people believe this should be a campaign about attacking one another on a personal basis and go back to the kinds of attacks that were suggested in some campaigns in the past, I don’t want to go there.

 

By: Brett LoGiurato, Business Insider, July 13, 2012

July 15, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“Wishful Thinking”: Does Business Success Make A Good President?

Mitt Romney’s chief qualification for the presidency, according to Mitt Romney, is his experience in the private sector. “[S]omeone who spent their career in the economy is more suited to help fix the economy than someone who spent his life in politics and as a community organizer,” he said in a recent interview.

But is that really true? Romney would hardly be the first man in the White House with extensive private sector experience, so we can test his claim by looking at the records of other 20th century presidents who came from business backgrounds. And those records suggest that private sector experience is by no means a guarantee of of a good president. In fact, it’s anything but.

Let’s begin at the bottom. That is where Warren Harding, president from 1921 to 1923, routinely ranks in historians’ presidential rankings. There’s little doubt Harding was a skilled businessman. After he bought an Ohio newspaper, the Marion Daily Star, and launched a weekly edition, the paper became one of the most popular in the country. Harding then profitably bumped off its rival to become the official organ for Marion’s governmental notices.

But none of that success made Harding a good president. The administration is most notable for its foreign-policy isolationism and a plethora of scandals culminating in the Teapot Dome Affair, called by one historian “the greatest and most sensational scandal in the history of American politics” before Watergate.

Next up is Herbert Hoover, who founded the Zinc Corporation in 1905 and was a wildly successful investor, making $4 million by 1914—$92 million in today’s dollars. “If a man has not made a million dollars by the time he is forty, he is not worth much,” Hoover once said.

But like Harding, Hoover turned out to be pretty much worthless as president. His policies helped grease the skids for the 1929 stock market crash, and most historians agree that his hands-off response helped trigger the Great Depression. Indeed, the day after the crash, Hoover said, “The fundamental business of the country, that is the production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis.” His foreign policy wasn’t much better: He did little to stop the nascent Japanese aggression that would ultimately lead to Pearl Harbor. A 2010 survey ranked him as 36th of 43 presidents.

Aside from Hoover, Jimmy Carter was perhaps the most successful businessman to become president. He took over his father’s failed peanut-farming business and turned it around, making himself a wealthy man by the time he ran for Georgia’s governorship.

Again though, Carter wasn’t able to translate his peanut prowess into presidential success. Between stagflation, an energy crisis, the Iran Hostage Crisis and rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini, Carter was arguably the worst Democratic president of the 20th century. Indeed, despite being the sitting president, he nearly lost a primary challenge to Ted Kennedy in 1980, before being ousted from office by Ronald Reagan that fall. Carter averages 27th in the rankings.

George H. W. Bush, too, was an extremely successful businessman, working his way up from sales clerk in an oil corporation to founding his own two profitable oil companies. By the time he ran for Congress in 1966, he was a millionaire.

Bush 41 wasn’t a bad president—but neither was he a good one. His strength was foreign policy, where he skillfully wound down the Cold War and won the first Gulf War. But the economy spiraled into recession on his watch. Unable to convince Americans he knew how to fix it, Bush lost his 1992 re-election bid to Bill Clinton.

Bush’s son, George W., was less successful in the oil business. The company he founded, the aptly named Arbusto, nearly went belly-up before being sold. But he did do OK as the co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, improving their performance and making a ton of cash. As for his presidency? Well, you know that disaster.

One other businessman-turned-president bears mention here. Harry Truman co-owned a haberdashery which went bankrupt in 1921. And yet, most historians agree Truman was a better president than any of those mentioned above. He implemented the strategy that would eventually lead to victory in the Cold War, recognized Israel, bravely avoided intervening in China, stared down Joe McCarthy, and helped usher in a period of robust and broad-based economic growth. Though unpopular when he left office, he is routinely ranked among the top 10 presidents, and has ranked as high as fifth in one scholarly survey.

None of this is to say that being a good businessman makes you a bad president, or vice versa. Whether there’s any correlation at all is hard to say, given the small size of the sample. But that’s just it. Romney’s central argument, boiled down to its essence, is that his private-sector success will necessarily translate into success in the Oval Office. And modern history tells a very different story.

 

By: Jordan Michael Smith, MSNBC Lean Forward, July 12, 2012

July 14, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Shiny Objects”: Would The Right Really Care About A Pro-Choice Running Mate?

With the Drudge Report’s bombshell scoop that Condi Rice is now the veepstakes’ front-runner — which, some pundits suspect, is just the Romney campaign’s attempt at dangling a shiny object in front of the political media in an attempt to distract from the latest Bain controversy — the first reaction of many, on the right and the left, is that Rice’s pro-choice views make her inclusion on the GOP ticket impossible. Theoretically, though, it’s not impossible. Avoiding traffic jams while driving out of the city on a summer Friday afternoon is impossible. Watching the Lion King without crying during the stampede scene is impossible. A Republican presidential candidate choosing a pro-choice VP is entirely possible.

To be sure, the right would obviously prefer an all-pro-life ticket. Why not? But if it came down to it, we can’t imagine that having a pro-choicer on the ticket would hurt Romney. The vice-president doesn’t have any influence over the direction of abortion policy in this country, and everyone knows it. Rice isn’t going to appoint justices to the Supreme Court. She’s not going to sign bills or veto them. The most she could do is cast a tie-breaking vote on some kind of abortion-related legislation, and even in that infinitesimally rare scenario, it’s hard to believe she would break with her president and her entire party.

When it came down to it, the choices before conservatives would be President Obama — your standard abortion-loving and abortion-loving-judge-appointing liberal — or Mitt Romney, a pro-lifer (although, granted, not the most trustworthy one) who will appoint pro-life judges but who happens to share a ticket with some pro-choice window dressing. You’re telling us that abortion crusaders are going to stay home on Election Day and hand the infanticide-loving president four more years in the White House because Romney declined to appoint a pro-lifer to an entirely symbolic position in his cabinet? We don’t buy it.

Look no further than Sarah Palin, perhaps the most pro-life person on the planet, for proof of how easily Rice’s pro-choiceness (which isn’t even that strong to begin with) can be overlooked. “I think that Condoleezza Rice would be a wonderful vice-president,” she said on Fox News last night, while also noting that “it’s not the vice-president that would legislate abortion.”

If even Palin — who has said that she wouldn’t even want her 14-year-old daughter to abort a baby conceived through rape — is okay with Rice being on the ticket, other pro-lifers should be fine with it too.

This is not to say that we think Romney will actually pick Rice. For one thing, he already promised that he wouldn’t. Aside from that, it really comes down to two words: Bush taint. Sorry for the mental image.

 

By: Dan Amira, Daily Intel, July 13, 2012

July 14, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Another Lurch Downward”: Romney Thinks He’s Above The Level Of Accountability Required Of A Presidential Candidate

The gist of his big media interviews today is explained thus:

Mitt Romney on Friday night demanded an apology from President Obama for making what he called “reckless” and “absurd” allegations about his record while repeating his insistence that he left Bain Capital in 1999 to run the Olympics.

He then attacked the president personally:

“What kind of a president would have a campaign that says something like that about the nominee of another party?” Mr. Romney asked during a brief interview with CBS News. Earlier, on CNN, Mr. Romney called the accusation of criminal behavior — which came on Thursday from Mr. Obama’s deputy campaign manager — “disgusting” and “demeaning” and said it was destructive to the political process.

“It’s something that I think the president should take responsibility for and stop it,” Mr. Romney said.

This is another lurch downward for Romney in this cycle, I’d say. For a simple reason. We have documentary proof that Romney told the SEC he was CEO of Bain through 2002, and that he drew a salary of more than $100,000 for doing that job. So was he telling the truth on television today when he insisted that “I left any responsibility whatsoever, any effort, any involvement whatsoever in the management of Bain Capital after February of 1999” – or when the company he solely owned filed with the SEC, and when Bain itself called him the CEO in July 1999, and when he testified under oath in 2002 that he was involved in many business and board meetings of Bain companies in the period in question?

To put it more succinctly: how does this statement

[T]here were a number of social trips and business trips that brought me back to Massachusetts, board meetings, Thanksgiving and so forth… [I] remained on the board of the Staples Corporation and Marriott International, the LifeLike Corporation [all Bain companies]

and this excerpt from a press release from Bain in July 1999:

Bain Capital CEO W. Mitt Romney, currently on a part-time leave of absence to head the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee for the 2002 Games said …

jibe with this one today:

“I left any responsibility whatsoever, any effort, any involvement whatsoever in the management of Bain Capital after February of 1999 … I went on to run the Olympics for three years I was there full time after that I came back and ran in Massachusetts for governor. I had no role with regards to Bain Capital after February 1999.

and this recent statement from Bain itself, declaring Romney had:

“absolutely no involvement with the management or investment activities of the firm or with any of its portfolio companies.”

My italics. He had “no role with regards to” Bain Capital after February 1999 (a very broad statement) – except for being the CEO, and repeatedly returning to Massachusetts for board meetings of Bain-owned companies, which he “attended by telephone if I could not return”.

A false SEC filing is a serious offense; to say so is not disgusting. So is potential perjury in 2002 when Romney detailed his continued involvement in Bain-owned enterprises in the period he retained the CEO title and now says he had nothing whatsoever to do with Bain. The SEC filing rules apply to everyone – except, it seems, to Romney, and his well-paid legal and accounting team. They may have so internalized this immunity from any accountability that Romney may indeed genuinely feel disgusted by being called to follow the normal rules, or called out on logical inconsistencies.

I’m getting the feeling that Romney thinks he is above the level of accountability required in a presidential candidate or even in an average ethical businessman. He seems genuinely offended to be directly challenged with facts – which he still won’t address or rebut in detail. So he simply huffs and puffs and uses words like “disgusting” for a perfectly valid charge in the big boy world of presidential politics.

This does not seem to me to be like a candidate ready for prime time.

 

By: Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Beast, July 13, 2012

July 14, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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