“Reality”: A Product Of The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy
“Reality,” Stephen Colbert once famously said, “has a well-known liberal bias.”
It was one of those jokes that isn’t, one of those barbs that captures something painfully true, allows you to see it with clarity you never could if viewing straight on. It’s worth noting that Colbert said this years before that jump-the-shark moment last week when conservatives accused the Labor Department of conspiring against them. In case you missed it, it happened when the government released figures showing the unemployment rate has tumbled to 7.8 percent.
Most of us considered this good news. Because it validates President Obama’s narrative of a slowly-improving economy, many conservatives did not. They called the figure a fraud — “monkey business,” in the words of Donald Trump. Former GE CEO Jack Welch saw it as evidence of malfeasance from “these Chicago guys.” Fox “News” asked, “Is the number real?”
And so it goes in the conservative War on Reality.
Not that this was the first salvo in said war. Just before the numbers came out, conservatives were working to discredit polls that showed President Obama leading Mitt Romney. “Bogus,” said Rush Limbaugh.
You see, the war goes back a ways. Back to Sen. Jon Kyl saying that 90 percent of Planned Parenthood’s activities are abortion-related and, when called on that lie, issuing a statement that what he said was “not intended to be … factual.” Back to Sarah Palin sounding the alarm about death panels, back to Glenn Beck saying conservatives started the Civil Rights Movement, back to people pretending there is some mystery over the president’s birthplace.
Heck, it goes back to the Bush administration cutting inconvenient facts from government reports, back to Bush brushing aside a pessimistic report on Iraq by saying the intelligence community was “just guessing.”
The point here — this cannot be overemphasized — is not ideology. Rather, it is about the fact that we cannot effectively debate ideology if we do not have a body of facts in common.
Under such circumstances, political discourse must devolve into incoherence. We cannot discuss what color to paint the room if we cannot agree on what constitutes red or green — or the room. We literally have no shared language with which to even have the discussion.
This is the legacy of the War on Reality. Some of us live under a new ethos, fueled and abetted by Fox, the Internet and talk radio, which holds that facts are optional and reality, multiple choice — and that anyone who questions this is part of the conspiracy against you. The results have not been pretty. When, in the history of American political discourse, have conservatives — some, not all — seemed more paranoid, put-upon and ready to believe themselves the victims of outlandish plots?
Hillary Clinton was rightly derided for saying a “vast right-wing conspiracy” was out to get her husband. But if that one-time utterance made her sound ridiculous, what shall we make of this constant drumbeat from the political right? What shall we make of a mindset in which the answer to every criticism, the response to every unwelcome fact, is to point to a conspiracy of bias that exists mostly in their minds?
Now, we reach a sobering watershed. Who knew even the professional numbers crunchers in the Labor Department were part of this vast left-wing conspiracy?
Hearing that, one must believe one of two things: either math also has a liberal bias, or, it is time to ask ourselves what becomes of a country where problem-solving is paralyzed because problem solvers cannot agree on a common reality?
Math, should it need saying, has no liberal bias. So give that question some hard thought. After all, we have only the one country. We may not share the same reality, but we will certainly share the same fate.
By: Leonard Pitts, The National Memo, October 10, 2012
“Poor Donald Trump”: His RNC Prime Time Billing Goes To The Other Clowns
Donald Trump, a television character in a 1980s-era satirical dystopian future SciFi movie, was supposed to have a big “surprise” on Monday at this week’s RNC, which he wasn’t invited to (he says otherwise but he is delusional), but then the Republicans were “forced” to cancel because of Hurricane Isaac. And they didn’t reschedule it.
What they did make time for at the convention included a song by the guy your grandma liked on “American Idol” a few years back, a speech by former Hooters promoter Connie Mack and an old man yelling at a chair.
The old man yelling at the chair was, of course, legendary American actor and director Clint Eastwood, who was invited because I think the organizers assumed he wasn’t as crazy as every single other Republican celebrity, but then he went and did the craziest thing of the week. (I don’t think Eastwood is crazy, actually. He’s just … eccentric.)
That had to be particularly galling, for Donald. This totally unvetted rambling piece of absurdist theater got prime billing right before the nominee, but the dumb video he made was just ignored completely.
Poor Donald didn’t get any attention this week for his craziness, because he wasn’t invited to Tampa. Because he embarrasses the Republican Party. Because he is basically a giant national joke. Donald Trump, object of fun for all Americans, was too embarrassing to be allowed to go to Tampa and ruin Mitt Romney’s party.
You know who was in Tampa? And not just there but constantly being followed by a gaggle of reporters eager to listen to every statement he uttered? Jon Voight. Jon Voight was a special guest at the Republican National Convention, because he is less embarrassing than Donald Trump. Jon Voight, who was in “Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2,” and who is, in 2012, most famous for being Angelina Jolie’s embarrassing estranged father, was on Fox like every 10 minutes while Donald Trump was in New York being ignored by everyone.
Also Stephen Baldwin. He was there too! Everyone said he was super nice.
Those two people — both of whom are completely insane, by the way — are less embarrassing than Donald Trump, who for real thinks he is a well-respected and feared businessman and not a TV clown. I feel so bad for the guy.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, August 31, 2012
“A Last Gasp Candidate”: Is Mitt Romney A Real American?
If it’s our ideals and not our origins that make us countrymen, Romney’s tactics suggest that he’s the one whose Americanness should come under question.
Nobody’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. But as someone of Chinese descent I have been asked plenty of times where I’m from — and when I say “Poughkeepsie,” I often get the follow-up question that’s almost a cliché now among Asian Americans: “No, where are you really from?”
It’s always disheartening to get that question, even though I’ve learned to answer it with equanimity and usually take care to make the inquisitor feel not-stupid. But it’s always clarifying, for it reveals the default picture in the minds of some of my fellow Americans about who they are, who we are, and who I am.
That’s why Mitt Romney’s birther-baiting remarks today are, in a way, welcome. Let there be no doubt: He is the candidate for people who think the name Obama must be Muslim and its bearer indelibly foreign. He is also the candidate for the greater number of people who do not initially imagine that someone with my face, my eyes, my skin could be from this country.
Even in one of his home states (Michigan, the site of today’s remarks), Mitt Romney is not some iconic American hero whose patriotism is beyond reproach. The reason no one questions where Romney was born is simply this: he is white. If that’s good enough for you, then you’re good enough for Romney.
But that’s not good enough for America. I have as much a claim to be the image of an American as Romney and his offspring do. So does Barack Obama. So, by the way, does Bobby Jindal or Ted Cruz or Susana Martinez — nonwhites in Romney’s own party who likely have also been asked (no, really) where they are from.
Romney’s implicit pledge of allegiance to the birther movement is as revealing of his character as anything else in his campaign of half-deliberate opacity. He appears to lack a core capacity for empathy. He literally cannot see himself as someone not white, as someone accented or a newcomer.
In fact, Romney’s tactics suggest that he’s the one whose Americanness should come under question. True Americanness is not about how WASPy your surname is, how pale your skin, or how many generations your family has lived here — or how much you can lord those facts over others. Nor is it about how subtly you can stir up secret prejudices against people who could be deemed outsiders.
True Americanness is about fidelity to a creed that by design transcends color or place of family origin. Yes, we as a nation have often subverted that creed, or averted our gaze, but it still stands in timeless judgment, measuring our willingness to deliver on the promise of equal citizenship. True Americans see in a sea of colored faces a chance to bring everyone into the fold, so that the team is stronger and the creed redeemed. Mitt Romney can prance all he wants but his words today were those of a second-rate American.
And the more he plays his Donald Trump card, the more his becomes a last-gasp candidacy: the inarticulate paroxysm of those who still silently believe, as was once permissible to declare in public, that America is a white nation and that the interests, mores, and preferences of whites should predominate.
Romney may yet win in November. But he and this whole odious line of attack are on the losing side of history. The tide of demographics is irresistible, and soon enough it’ll sweep up his birth certificate and mine into a new notion of who is truly from this country.
By: Eric Liu, The Atlantic, August 24, 2012
“Decency Is Irrelevant”: Romney Still Palling Around With Trump
Last month, reality-television personality Donald Trump reiterated his support for a ridiculous, borderline-racist conspiracy theory, but that didn’t stop Mitt Romney from cozying up to him.
As of last night, the Republican presidential hopeful is still palling around with the guy. ABC News reported yesterday afternoon that the Romney campaign’s “Dine With the Donald” luncheon had been postponed, but a Romney/Trump dinner last night in New York was not.
Although the lunch event was rain checked, tonight’s dinner fundraiser at the private residence of Martin Zweig will go on as planned. The dinner — which is reported to have raised millions of dollars and will host more than 50 guests — starts at 6:30 p.m., at Zweig’s residence in the Pierre Hotel, touted as one of the most expensive homes in Manhattan.
“Despite the multitude of erroneous reports today, I can assure you Mr. Trump and Gov. Romney both look forward to seeing one another this evening,” Cohen added.
Of course they will.
Remember, in May, when reporters yesterday whether Trump’s ugly antics gives him pause, Romney was unconcerned. “You know, I don’t agree with all the people who support me and my guess is they don’t all agree with everything I believe in,” Romney said. “But I need to get 50.1% or more and I’m appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people.”
In other words, decency is irrelevant — the Republican presidential candidate should partner with anyone, no matter how vile, so long as it furthers his ambitions and gets him more votes.
As of last night, that still appears to be the case.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, June 29, 2012
“America’s Real Welfare Queen”: Romney Critical Of Government Aid That Helped Bain Capital Profit
Mitt Romney likes to say that “government does not create prosperity.”
His record in the private equity industry shows otherwise.
During Romney’s years as chief executive of Bain Capital LLC, companies owned by the firm received millions of dollars in benefits from a variety of state and local government economic development programs.
In California, taxpayer money built one Bain company a conveyor bridge between two of its buildings. New York City gave another Bain company tax breaks and lower energy bills to discourage it from moving to New Jersey. And in Indiana, a county government issued bonds to help buy new equipment for a Bain-owned steel plant — a business success featured in a Romney campaign ad touting his private sector prowess.
“From a national perspective, this makes no economic sense to allow cities and states to do this,” said Arthur Rolnick, former director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. “In general, you want the market to be making these decisions — not the political system.”
The public-private agreements, which began in the first decade of Romney’s tenure as CEO, show that government played a supporting role in establishing Bain as among the nation’s most successful private equity firms and enabling him to accumulate a fortune his campaign says could reach $250 million.
Criticizing Government Involvement
On the campaign trail, the presumptive Republican nominee has hammered at President Barack Obama for favoring an unhealthy government role in the economy.
“When government, rather than the market, routinely selects winners or losers, or puts its hands on the scales of justice then enterprises and entrepreneurs can’t predict their prospects,” Romney said in a March 19 speech at the University of Chicago.
Asked about the disconnect between Romney’s free market rhetoric and Bain’s track record, Amanda Henneberg, a campaign spokeswoman, said: “It’s not at all uncommon for state and local governments to use competitive incentives and programs to create a favorable business climate.”
Yet in his Chicago speech, the former Massachusetts governor decried the “endless subsidies and credits intended to shape behavior in our economic society,” and assailed government “intrusion in the workings of the free marketplace itself.”
Exhibit A in Romney’s attack is the Obama administration’s investment in the failed solar power company Solyndra, which could cost taxpayers more than $500 million.
Massachusetts Investment Bankruptcy
Romney’s effort to capitalize on the administration’s stumbles was complicated this week by the June 1 failure of a Massachusetts clean energy company that received state financing while he was governor.
As a private equity investor, Romney showed no reluctance to accept help from government coffers — on one occasion even becoming partners with taxpayers.
In October 1994, a Connecticut state fund made a $500,000 equity investment in Environmental Data Resources of Milford, Connecticut, which Bain had helped start. The state’s Connecticut Innovations agency the previous year also had given the firm a separate $500,000 to be paid back with royalties from its software products.
The company used the money to hire several technologists and digitize old maps of industrial sites, according to Rob Barber, the company’s chief executive.
EDR Expansion
Beginning in 1991, Bain had invested $2.3 million in the company, which produced software for environmental site assessments, ultimately recording a 35.7 percent return, according to a Deutsche Bank prospectus that detailed the performance of Bain’s funds through 1999. Starting with just three employees, EDR grew to about 50 workers by the middle of the decade, Peter Cashman, the company’s founder, said in an interview.
Victor Budnick, who was then Connecticut Innovations’ director of investments, says the company obtained better terms for the public funds than it likely could have received from private investors. Private money would have been “disadvantageous from the perspective of ownership,” Budnick said.
The deal ultimately profited both the government and EDR. The state got back $3.8 million in return for its $500,000 equity stake plus an additional $1 million from its royalty- linked investment, according to Pamela Hartley, a spokeswoman for Connecticut Innovations.
Management-led Negotiations
There is no indication that Romney, who became CEO of Bain Capital in 1984, was directly involved in any of the individual companies’ negotiations with government officials. Such operational issues were typically left to the management of companies Bain acquired.
“I never heard of Bain Capital,” says Walter Sprouse, who was president of the Randolph County Economic Development Corporation in North Carolina when it ponied up $375,000 to help lure Sealy Inc.’s corporate headquarters.
Even so, Romney benefitted from the incentives, along with other Bain investors. When the Internet advertising company Double Click Inc. considered moving its Manhattan-based corporate headquarters, New York City’s Economic Development Corporation in 1999 provided a $4 million package of sales and energy tax breaks tied to the company’s payroll.
The company reported a loss of $56 million that year and was acquired by Google Inc. in 2008. Bain realized $88.6 million on its initial $8.5 million Double Click investment, made in 1997, according to the Deutsche Bank prospectus.
Bain Portfolio Returns
Bain’s investments in the companies that benefited from government actions were part of a portfolio that earned an 88 percent average annual return through the end of 1999, the prospectus said.
The two-time presidential candidate says his business experience qualifies him to turn around the troubled national economy. He accuses government of “standing in the way” of recovery.
Yet, government officials employed a variety of techniques to help Bain-owned companies. In Kansas City, city officials issued industrial revenue bonds as part of a financing arrangement that saved a Bain-owned steel company about $3 million in property taxes over five years, according to the Kansas City Business Journal.
Decaying Steel Plant
The GS Technologies facility, dating to the late 19th century, had employed around 4,500 workers at its peak. By the mid-1990s, the plant, which produced wire rods for the auto and furniture industries, cried out for modernization.
“Really, it was in bad, bad shape. It looked like something out of a Dickens novel,” said Mario Concha, who headed the company’s international division at the time.
To help fund a $70 million updating, the city in October 1993 authorized a $45 million industrial revenue bond, which GS Technologies was to purchase. Kansas City issued the first $5 million the following year and used the proceeds to buy steel- making equipment and lease it back to the company. That arrangement was designed so that the city could cut the mill’s property tax bill by 50 percent, according to the Kansas City Business Journal.
New equipment didn’t solve all the company’s problems. Foreign competition and a two-month strike in 1997 fueled a downward spiral, which led to bankruptcy in 2001. The Obama campaign has featured GS Technologies in a political ad that includes one former mill worker accusing Bain of “vampire” capitalism.
Industrial Revenue Bonds
Industrial revenue bonds, typically repaid with money generated from the project they fund, act as a subsidy for private business, reducing either their financing costs or their tax bill, said Timothy Bartik, senior economist of the W.E. Upjohn Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
One of Bain’s companies drew government benefits on two coasts. In 1993, when Leiner Health Products of Torrance, California, was looking for a new home, officials in nearby Carson, California, agreed to construct a $500,000 conveyor bridge linking two buildings the maker of vitamins and nutritional supplements was eyeing.
“Our construction guys were in awe of how fast the turnaround time was for permits,” Giffen Ott, the former Bain executive who was the company’s vice president of manufacturing, told The Los Angeles Times.
Ott didn’t respond to e-mail and telephone requests for comment.
Upgrading Public Roads
Five years later, Leiner decided to move a portion of its manufacturing operation from Ohio to a new site in York County, South Carolina. State and local officials provided a package of benefits that included worker training, upgrades to public roads, water and sewer facilities, and tax breaks. Officials with the state’s Employment Security Commission even handled inquiries from would-be job applicants, according to a July 21, 1998 article in The Herald of Rock Hill, South Carolina.
The county cut Leiner’s property tax assessment by 43 percent, saving the company “millions of dollars,” according to Mark Farris, York County economic development director.
Leiner has since been acquired by NBTY Inc., which itself was acquired by the Carlyle Group in 2010. Michael Collins, NBTY’s chief financial officer, didn’t respond to e-mail and telephone requests for comment.
Free market purists object to such government aid to business, saying profitable companies don’t need it and unprofitable ones should be allowed to fail.
A Corporate Gift
“It is a gift to the corporation,” says James Bennett, eminent scholar at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. “The American welfare queen is the American corporation. All they’re doing is grabbing for taxpayer benefits and taxpayer dollars.”
The attractiveness of such deals can be glimpsed in cases where the marriage of public and private resources pays off for both sides. In 1998, state and local officials in Indiana assembled a package of incentives to convince Steel Dynamics Inc. (STLD) to locate a $341 million steel plant in Whitley County, in the state’s northeast corner.
Whitley County issued a $13 million taxable industrial revenue bond to buy the giant caster at the heart of the steel- making operation along with a separate $10 million bond for sewer and water improvements. State officials kicked in workforce training aid.
Company Expansion
In the intervening years, the company has expanded its Whitley County facility twice and now employs 596 workers. Last year, it produced 876,000 tons of structural steel beams for the construction industry and rails for the nation’s railroads, according to the company’s filings with Securities and Exchange Commission.
“It was a fabulous opportunity. Jobs have developed beyond our expectations,” said Jeff Gage, who was the county attorney at the time.
In an ad entitled “American Dream,” the Romney campaign boasts of the role his “private sector leadership team” played in Steel Dynamics’ success.
Some of his allies acknowledge that a savvy public sector deserves some of the credit.
“The government was trying to help out,” real estate developer Donald Trump, a Romney supporter, said during a May 14 appearance on Fox News, “and sometimes, that’s not the worst thing in the world.”
By: David J. Lynch, Bloomberg, June 5, 2012
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